Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

“I trusted no one. I questioned everything.”

There was something about the author’s honesty that had me reading and reading and reading this book. Judith Ford has enough life experience for at least three people, and the story she shares with readers in the form of Fever of Unknown Origin is something incredibly moving. It’s about a medical mystery, and one woman’s battle for her life and her sanity over the years. I’m so happy to be sharing my review for this book!

About the book & author

Judith Ford was a successful psychotherapist with a relatively new second marriage, a full-time clinical practice, and three children. She was also a runner, a yoga-practitioner, a dancer, and a writer when she came down with a mysterious illness that landed her in the hospital for a full summer and nearly ended her life. She recovered through a combination of Western medicine and shamanic journeys. A few years later she helped her parents through their final illnesses. This book is both her story and theirs, about how each of them maintained hope or sometimes despaired. It’s about how they each suffered and rallied, laughed, loved, forgave, and let go. And it’s about how all of us live in the shadows of the unknown and the unanswerable. I wasn’t sure I was ready!

My thoughts

Starting a new memoir about someone you’ve never heard of is always a bit of a risk. I’ve read some great ones in the past about people wanting to share their experiences, and some not so great. More recently, I read Impatiently Waiting For Miracles which I found brilliant and incredibly moving. And thankfully, when I started reading this one, I knew it was going to be a decent one!

Fever of Unknown Origin follows the author, Judith. She was a runner, she practised yoga and was a dancer. She was fit and healthy, or so it seemed for a long time. But on one particular run, she knew something was off. She didn’t feel as great as she once felt, and that scared her. Over time, she experienced dizzy spells, extreme fatigue, unexplained rashes, fevers, weak muscles. Ever since some family illnesses a few years ago, I’m always an advocate for getting yourself checked out as soon as you can when something doesn’t feel right, and in my head, I was urging Judith not to keep putting off an appointment with her doctor. There were so many reasons why she did, but when she finally did talk to someone, it was clear something wasn’t right. And that ‘something’ was much bigger and much more life threatening than she could have ever imagined.

“As I listened to Chris and the nurse, it was clear that the two of them thought this person they were discussing should be admitted to the hospital immediately. I had trouble believing that person was me.”

Hearing about the pain and discomfort Judith experienced was terrifying. It was such a traumatic time for her, not knowing what was causing this mysterious illness. Her hospital stay was much longer than the couple of days she had envisioned, and what was even more worrying was that the hospital staff couldn’t diagnose her with anything at first. Her symptoms were so strange, so abnormal that it was difficult to treat. How incredibly scary must that be? Putting myself in Judith’s shoes was really tough for me. I couldn’t imagine what was going through her head, how she felt about her predicament, but how she describes her experiences in the book gave me some sort of an idea of her pain, her worry. Judith seemed like such a selfless person to me. Always worrying about her client meetings, wanting her children to be looked after, to be safe while she was in hospital. I had such a strong hope for her to get a diagnosis quickly and to rest and recover as soon as possible. But deep down I knew none of this recovery would be simple.

During her time in hospital, Judith shares anecdotes and experiences from years gone by. She had plenty of time to think about all this laying in a hospital bed for days on end. I liked this break in narrative, as even though her time in hospital was important, it became really hard to keep reading the same sort of thing over and over. I liked learning more about her past, some fond memories, some not so fond. About her family and childhood. She finally returns home – without a diagnosis – and has to learn to get back to some form of normality, continuing to suffer while trying different treatments. Judith doesn’t seem leave anything out of her story of recovery. I was fascinated by the human body, how it reacts, how it tells us that something isn’t right. And after more pain, more traumatic experiences, more uncertainty, there is some light. Her doctor gives her a part diagnosis, even though it didn’t explain every one of her symptoms. There was still a way to go.

“What I didn’t know – what the illness had shown me and I was still trying to accept – was that illness is inevitable, as inevitable as death.”

Another hospital admission felt like things were actually looking up, staff were taking her seriously. Judith was very seriously ill by this point. Would she ever get back to her old self? Would she ever get better? She considers suicide which broke my heart, and the book became really heavy as she explains these thoughts. It really put things into perspective for me. It wasn’t just the physical aspects of her illness she needed to get used to, but it was also the mental aspects too. When something like Judith’s illness rears its head, you have to have the mental capacity to deal with all the changes it will bring to your life. It was such a hard life to transition into. What just added to all this difficulty was her mother having a stroke, just as Judith was feeling like her old self again, something else to knock her off balance. The second half of the book was focused more on her mother’s battles with health, and then her father’s. It was another long, uncertain time for Judith and her family, and I really felt for them. I could understand their pain.

The detail the author included about her family life in the years gone by really brought everything to life. There was so much sadness in her words that made me want to go visit all my loved ones, to tell them I loved them. To spend more time with them. I love my parents more than anything and seeing how Judith struggled with her own parents’ health broke me in two. It was such an eye-opening read in many, many ways. A lot of those ending chapters hit home for me, things we’re currently struggling with as a family. There were so many parts of this book that made me tear up and feel everything so deeply. It was a powerfully moving read until the end.

Fever of Unknown Origin is such an informative, honest and inspirational read about one woman’s journey of overcoming a mysterious illness, and the years of helping her parents with their own illnesses before their deaths. I wasn’t quite expecting the emotional turmoil at the start, but I welcomed it. The last few years haven’t been easy for my own family, so this book really stuck with me, and I could relate to a lot of the anger, the sadness, the feelings of helplessness. It’s a tough, thought-provoking read in so many ways written in such an easy to absorb way. A fantastic memoir with messages of hope, determination and resilience at its core.

You can grab your own copy of Fever of Unknown Origin right now on Amazon.

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