Are you a healthcare provider? On the For healthcare providers page, read why you should read this book.
For years, Jolien Plantinga alternated her work as a GP with going on adventurous trips. For the past two years, however, she experienced a completely different journey. Affected by Lyme disease she was forced, like a kind of Alice in Wonderland, to take a journey throughout the healthcare sector.
Although Plantinga appeared to be cured of Lyme in 2004, the disease returned in full force in 2019. She discovers how difficult it is for doctors to really listen to what the patient tells them. She also runs up against the preconceptions that exist about Lyme disease. Suffering from a disease about which there are still more questions than answers leads her down a difficult path.
Searching for meaning in times of stagnation, she shares her observations and questions, both from the doctor’s and the patient’s perspective. She also looks back at her own performance as a GP. Which of the insights she now gained as a patient did she put into practice as a GP?
100% of the royalties go to Lyme research and education.
“My being sick makes me look in the mirror. Who was I as a doctor? Did I say ‘I don’t know’ often enough? Did I dare to question medical science enough? Did I think outside the box enough? Did I listen to the other person’s experience without judgement? Not always.
While travelling through my memory in search of the doctor I was, I am reminded of a patient I visited after she was diagnosed with Lyme disease. She was lying on the sofa with an arm over her eyes to shield them from the light. The curtains were half-closed. I remember saying something like, ‘I’m shocked at how intense this is for you.’ Or: ‘I am shocked at how violently you are reacting to this.’ I hope I said the first, but fear it was the latter. And how was my tone? Was it mild? Or was I judging her? Was I trying to hold on to the my conveniently safe belief that Lyme is not that bad? However I brood, I don’t know the answer.”
Recommendations
“Very impressive. When I read stories from experts by experience, it’s always special when they themselves work in healthcare. You don’t really understand it until you have experienced it deeply yourself. That’s also what makes it so difficult to get the message across to people who haven’t experienced it themselves and that can be very frustrating! In writing the book, Jolien makes a valiant effort!
— Erik Gerritsen, Secretary-General at the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport 2015-2021
I hope it will be read by many healthcare providers. In all its rawness and candour, an extraordinary book of a very resilient person despite all the vulnerabilities she has to deal with. I hope the open ending in the book ends up being a happy ending.“
“So I read the book in 1 day… and lay awake over it… what a story! And how do I stay/be the doctor I want to be? It makes a lot of sense to me!”
— Berber Oldenbeuving, geriatrics specialist
“My sensational body is an impressive book. Not only because it calls attention in no uncertain terms to the fact that chronic Lyme does exist, and what its devastating consequences are. But also – and above all – because it is unsentimental, raw and unfiltered.”
— Frank van Wijck, Medical journalist & editor-in-chief The First Line
“Confronting yet disarming. Jolien takes the reader into her Lyme-infested head and life in an uncensored way. As an increasingly well-informed patient, she asks the GP she has been herself some pointed questions. This produces colourful anecdotes and fascinating reflections, which are of value to the entire medical profession.”
— Angèle van de Ven, (team) coach for medics and author of HEEL de dokter – living and working with meaning.
“Without sparing the other, but above all herself, you are taken into the author’s sincere, wise and regularly painfully desperate thoughts. In describing her experience as a patient, she holds up a mirror to both herself as a doctor and her fellow doctors.”
— Wendy Dienske, project manager at: ‘het Educatiepunt’