STEM CELL THERAPY
A stranger saved my life. By Susan Doherty-Hannaford Susan Doherty-Hannaford is a former journalist and an accomplished novelist. Her most recent novel is The Ghost Garden, published by Random House.
was cold because of the weather. I was shaking so
My story begins at 3 p.m. on February 25, 2015. I’m
dressing to return to the conference, my body broke
referring to my crisis, a Greek word that connotes
into a profound sweat. My ankles, thighs, hands, and
the “turning point” of a disease, when an important
forearms were sweating. I was the Trevi Fountain
change takes place indicating either recovery or
of sweat. And then I was fine, as though something
death. We’ve all had such instances, and this was the
nefarious had simply breezed through my body
most significant of mine – a curveball that became a
and left.
moment of enlightenment.
10
dramatically, I left the conference hall for my hotel room, and filled the bathtub with hot water. The hot bath seemed to do the trick, except that as I was
Unbeknownst to me, it was my first case of rigors,
While attending a conference in Boston, I was
an extreme reflexive response to exaggerated
shivery and cold. But that week in New England,
shivering. It was what the soldiers felt in the
239 centimetres of snow had tumbled from the sky,
wretched wet trenches of the First World War when
and the downtown streets were freakishly lined
they had contracted tuberculosis. Sweating is the
with three-metre walls of snow. I convinced myself I
body’s attempt to cool itself.
SIDEONE DECEMBER 2020
