When Jane Wilson-Howarth's son, David, was diagnosed with serious medical problems, the family faced the tough decision of whether to stay in England, or return to their home at the time, in remote Nepal. This is a moving story of this mother's determination to give her child the best possible chance of enjoying life.
Jane Wilson-Howarths book A Glimpse of Eternal Snows had me in floods of tears when I had only just started reading it. The authors observations of Nature and human nature are so carefully and accurately depicted that the story weaves around you and draws you in without your even noticing. Her language and awareness have the precision of the doctor she is. She describes the coldness of English hospitals and consultants and her not entirely repressed anger accurately and concisely. The raw realities that Nepalis live with she sees clearly, but she also beautifully describes the animals, birds, plants and landscapes of their untainted natural world so that you almost experience being there yourself. Then without warning somehow the story pierces you with a sudden insight into what it feels like to love a disabled child as much as she loved hers. Even without being a mother, you experience what it feels like to be one. Moreover, you feel what she felt upon bearing a disabled child as she portrays the emotional pain and psychological confusion her position brought her. I had to stop reading periodically at the beginning because at times the heart-wrenching was simply too much.
So many people will benefit from reading this book people who have suffered illness in their families (who hasnt?), especially people who have borne disabled children. I can't imagine the number of parents and families with such problems.
Although Wilson-Howarth shows that Nepal is certainly not without its severe problems, she conveys qualities they have that people in our more technologically sophisticated world would do well to consciously bring back into our lives. Her son is considered beautiful by Nepali women despite his hare lip and inability to do what healthy babies can do. They warm to his personality, not his outward appearance, so that he develops and begins to shine when away from the miserable hospital conditions that Cambridge consultants told her would be his lot in a short life.
It took great courage for Wilson-Howarth and her husband to ignore the learned naysayers and to choose to give their son a chance for happiness away from hospitals and guinea-pig operations. The book is a salutary lesson about the coldness of the mechanized professionalism in our world today, where doctors, teachers, businessmen and people who are absorbed into, or rather, hypnotised by computers and a mechanistic, pressured approach to life can be so much in their heads that they overlook or lose awareness of their hearts and other living beings around them.
On the other hand, the caste system of the East tends to stop sensible, intelligent behaviour at times. For instance, the wealthy wont even pick up rubbish outside their houses in disease-prone conditions because it is beneath them to do so.
Dr. Wilson-Howarth manages to write a balanced book about two very different cultures and ways of life, weighing each for its positives -
Amy CorzineJane Wilson-Howarths book A Glimpse of Eternal Snows had me in floods of tears when I had only just started reading it. The authors observations of Nature and human nature are so carefully and accurately depicted that the story weaves around you and draws you in without your even noticing. Her language and awareness have the precision of the doctor she is. She describes the coldness of English hospitals and consultants and her not entirely repressed anger accurately and concisely. The raw realities that Nepalis live with she sees clearly, but she also beautifully describes the animals, birds, plants and landscapes of their untainted natural world so that you almost experience being there yourself. Then without warning somehow the story pierces you with a sudden insight into what it feels like to love a disabled child as much as she loved hers. Even without being a mother, you experience what it feels like to be one. Moreover, you feel what
she felt upon bearing a disabled child as she portrays the emotional pain and psychological confusion her position brought her. I had to stop reading periodically at the beginning because at times the heart-wrenching was simply too much.
So many people will benefit from reading this book people who have suffered illness in their families (who hasnt?), especially people who have borne disabled children. I can't imagine the number of parents and families with such problems.
Although Wilson-Howarth shows that Nepal is certainly not without its severe problems, she conveys qualities they have that people in our more technologically sophisticated world would do well to consciously bring back into our lives. Her son is considered beautiful by Nepali women despite his cleft palate and inability to do what healthy babies can do. They warm to his personality, not his outward appearance, so that he develops and begins to shine when away from the miserable hospital conditions that Cambridge consultants told her would be his lot in a short life.
It took great courage for Wilson-Howarth and her husband to ignore the learned naysayers and to choose to give their son a chance for happiness away from hospitals and guinea-pig operations. The book is a salutary lesson about the coldness of the mechanized professionalism in our world today, where doctors, teachers, businessmen and people who are absorbed into, or rather, hypnotised by computers and a mechanistic, pressured approach to life can be so much in their heads that they overlook or lose awareness of their hearts and other living beings around them.
On the other hand, the caste system of the East tends to stop sensible, intelligent behaviour at times. For instance, the wealthy wont even pick up rubbish outside their houses in disease-prone conditions because it is beneath them to do so.
Dr. Wilson-Howarth manages to write a balanced book about two very different cultures and ways of life, weighing each for its po -
Amy CorzineAs I was flying across the Atlantic last week to Seattle, to a conference, I was transported to Nepal by this excellent, brilliantly compulsive, emotional book about
David.
I admire the bravery that Jane and Simon exhibited to fight the NHS system and give David the best life ever. Every Doctor or health care worker should read it ...every medical student should discuss it in their ethics teaching.
Dr Jane Dunbar -
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