All of a Piece

Barbara Webster knew something was wrong. The draining fatigue. The weakness and stumbling gait. But as doctor after doctor failed to find a cause, she began to doubt herself. Fourteen years would pass before she learned the reason. She had multiple sclerosis. All of a Piece is Barbara Webster's story. It tells how friends and physicians gradually grew impatient with "imaginary" ailments. They called her neurotic—or just plain lazy. Then came the diagnosis, and with it a sense of relief that would soon give way to a new and different uncertainty. Her uncertainty arose not from the physical aspects of the disease. Those were manageable. But her damaged brain was the center of her self. How could she trust even its most basic perceptions? Her growing awareness of the disease's emotional and psychological consequences began to raise questions. How does chronic disease affect slf-esteem, even identity? What about its impact on relationships?

All of a Piece describes the gradual and never-ending process of accepting life with a chronic, potentially disabling disease. And it reveals why that acceptance is so hard to acheive in America, where public buildings now accomodate the disabled but public attitudes do not. The averted eyes on the commuter bus, the silence of a friend, the polite turning away of passers-by in the street—all serve to separate the disabled from the rest of society by a gap that can't be bridged by wheelchair ramps.

"I can't categorize myself," Barbara Webster writes. "How much harder for those around me." All of a Piece is the story of a woman you may recognize. She happens to have multiple sclerosis. It is a story familiar to those suffering from chronic illness and to their families and friends. It is one the rest of us should know as well.