Book Review: Dead Mom Walking: A Memoir of Miracle Cures and Other Disasters

In June of 2010, over post-work elderflower martinis at the fabulous Roof Lounge at the Park Hyatt in Toronto, Rachel’s mother, Elaine, an alternative high school teacher and writing coach, tells them that a colonoscopy showed a polyp that may be cancerous. Despite their mother’s attempts to be nonchalant, Rachel can tell she is scared.

Their meeting with a renowned colorectal surgeon confirms the diagnosis but provides encouraging news—the cancer appears to be Stage 1. There is a very high probability that they can remove all of the cancer with surgery and, following a short period with a colostomy bag, Elaine can resume the full and rich life she has spent years crafting.

Rachel is relieved, but alarm bells ring when their mother asks what the other, less invasive, options are. Elaine agrees to think about her options but wants to go on her planned trip to Peru first. Rachel and their father Teddy, a retired judge, are confident that, with some time to absorb the news, Elaine will come around.

But Elaine has her own plans. She returns from Peru armed with a library full of books of dubious veracity about healing oneself and memoirs about beating cancer without modern medicine. Before long, Rachel is drawn into her mother’s world of alternative treatments where ayahuasca, Phoenix Tears, and scorpion venom are on the table, but surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation are not.

Rachel draws on their training as a journalist and champion chess player to strategically persuade their mother toward following her doctors’ advice. Rachel’s memoir chronicles their journey. It is infused with love, dark humour, and heartbreak.

As a teaching tool in medication education, Dead Mom Walking helps to humanize people who choose alternative medicine, disrupt negative stereotypes, and explore the less visible reasons people reject mainstream treatments. It invites reflection on patient experiences in health systems and how being dismissed, dehumanized, and traumatized can fuel medical mistrust.

Recommended chapter: Chapter 18—Elaine reveals some of the reasons for her rejection of surgery and chemotherapy.

Additional topics: communicating with hesitant or questioning patients, tolerating bad behaviour among professionals, ways alternative health practitioners attend to patient needs, end-of-life care, loss and grief, and humour.

View my conversation with Rachel Matlow as part of the Alan Klass Program in Health and Humanities speaker series:

Patient Perspectives and Narratives: The Emotional Appeal of Alternative Healing