This volume is the touching true story of a successful professional woman who is suddenly faced with a series of life-changing back operations in a very short period.

Forced to give up her profession and her lifestyle, Lucy M. Dobkins must undergo a myelogram, an MRI exam, a bone scan, and a CT scan. She takes the reader through her torment with sympathetic dystrophy, compressed nerves, and degenerated discs. She relates each doctor's findings and elaborate explanations of nerve root decompressions and spinal fusion. Ms. Dobkins even brings us with her to Intensive Care.

As she struggles to build a new life and business, she is again struck down and eventually begins to lose her faith in God and her hope for the future. But despite all her obstacles, Ms. Dobkins adopts techniques for coping with chronic, long-term pain and implements strategies for adjusting to overwhelming loss. Joyously, she rises from her personal disaster to build a happy life and a renewed faith in God.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lucy M. Dobkins offers Bad Back: Coping for Life as an inspiration for any one of the 6.5 million Americans with chronic back pain. It is also a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit, a story from which anyone can benefit. Ms. Dobkins invites others to follow in her footsteps and to not let their lives stop because of their injuries. Her life as an author includes the children's book Daddy, There's a Hippo in the Grapes ($13.95), also published by Pelican.

BAD BACK: Coping for Life
By Lucy M. Dobkins
Foreword by Manuel Lujan, Jr., William Krieger, and Thomas K. Sims
208 pp. 5? x 8?
7 Illustrations - Suggested reading - Index
ISBN: 1-56554-062-X
EAN: 978-1-56554-062-0 pb