It’s already a big spring for books about illness. I’ve written about The Last Best Cure and In Sickness As in Health, and now I’d like to introduce you to Cynthia Toussaint.

In the course of writing about gender and pain for In the Kingdom of the Sick, I interviewed Cynthia Toussaint several times. A former dancer whose life was turned upside down when a ballet injury turned into a serious, debilitating pain condition, Toussaint is the founder of For Grace, a nonprofit for women in pain. Her experiences having her pain dismissed and her suffering ignored, as well as her incredible story of unconditional love, make for a compelling read in Battle for Grace, her new memoir. In fact, Battle for Grace launched on Maria Shriver’s Architects of Change site.

Here is some more official information about Cynthia, as well as Battle for Grace:

“Cynthia Toussaint is the founder and spokesperson of For Grace (www.forgrace.org), an organization that fights to ensure the ethical and equal treatment of all women in pain. She has fostered two California Senate hearings on thunder-treatment of and gender bias toward women in pain and gave testimony at both events. Toussaint has appeared on more than 75 local and national television shows and featured in over 200 news stories, including ABC World News with Diane Sawyer, PBS, Discovery Health, The Learning Channel plus the New York Times and Newsweek, among many others. A recent media highlight was an invitation from Maria Shriver to launch Battle for Grace on her Architects of Change website. Toussaint lives in Los Angeles, CA, with her beloved John…

Toussaint takes readers on an extraordinary 30-year journey where a crippling mystery illness triggered uncontrolled violence that almost destroyed her. The story begins with a minor ballet injury at age 21 that grew into the chronic pain disease, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. Her pain went undiagnosed for 13 years as doctors told her it was all in her head. Bedridden for a decade, she was unable to speak for five of those years and was often reduced to the violence that attacked both herself and John Garrett, the love of her life. John has remained at her side for 33 years. She lost the career she’d dreamed of as an actor, dancer, singer, the chance to have a child and very nearly John as well…But Cynthia somehow stuck with it, refusing to be a victim. In her battle to survive, she’s taken on the role of activist and aggressively challenges HMOs and pharmaceutical companies that put the unholy dollar ahead of patient care…”

I am grateful for Cynthia’s insights in my own book, and pleased to share the details of her new memoir.