Book Review: Saving Sammy: Curing the Boy Who Caught OCD, by Beth Alison Maloney

 

I was offered another opportunity to do another book review for the same company that offered me the chance to read and review The Curse of the Good Girl, so I took it. As a general rule, I don't turn down free reading material, ESPECIALLY if it is memoir-ish, so a few weeks ago, I was sent a copy of Saving Sammy: Curing the Boy Who Caught OCD, by Beth Alison Maloney. I read it cover to cover in the span of two evenings. Sammy had just turned 13 when, out of the blue, he began exhibiting bizarre behaviors that corresponded with the some of the hallmark symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

The synopsis (because I can't write them for crap, remember?) lifted from the TLC Book Tours website:

“Sammy’s mother, Beth, already coping with the overwhelming responsibility of raising three sons alone, watched helplessly as her middle child descended into madness. Sammy was soon diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and later with Tourette syndrome. Unwilling to accept the doctors’ prognoses for lifelong mental illness and repeated hospitalizations, Beth fought to uncover what was causing this decline. Racing against time as Sammy slipped further from reality, Beth’s quest took her to the center of the medical community’s raging debate about whether mental illness can be caused by infection. With the battle lines firmly drawn, Beth searched until she found two cutting-edge doctors who answered that question with a definitive yes. Together, they cured Sammy. Five years later, he remains symptom free.”

There is no doubt that Beth Maloney is an amazing woman. She was already a freaking superhero for being a single mom raising three boys and working full-time as a lawyer. So I don't even know what to call her when she took on the additional full-time job of caring for and finding a way to treat a son with a crippling mental illness. And when I say “crippling,” I mean CRIPPLING. Sammy was so sick that he couldn't go to school, couldn't leave the house, couldn't get up the stairs and into his room sometimes without it taking HOURS. I recall at one point, the family stayed at a hotel, and it took Sammy more than two hours to walk from the van in the parking lot to the hotel room simply because he had to perform so many rituals and compulsions along the way. Sammy was a really, really sick kid. So in addition to taking care of two kids who were functioning normally and needed to go to school and get help with homework and be shuttled to activities and oh, I don't know, FED MEALS, Beth Maloney was working full-time, caring 24 hours a day for an exhaustingly ill child that no one knew how best to help, and whenever she got a spare moment, researching ways to make him better.

Dude. Think about that. I complain if Dave is home late from work, and I don't have someone to corral the kids so I can finish getting dinner on the table. I get frustrated when I have to get up three times a night with Lucy or when I can't get Asher to eat what I've made for dinner or say thank you when I hand him a sippy cup of water. And she held it together – well, okay, she did way more than just hold it together – with a situation a thousand times more dire than anything I've ever experienced as a parent. I think about how lucky Sammy was to have a mom who fought for him the way she did. Maybe this is going to sound awful, but I have to hope I would do the same thing for my kids. I mean, I know we all say that we would do anything for our kids, ANYTHING, but I really do lack an empathetic side. I have this sinking feeling that in Beth's place, I would have gotten angry, and frustrated. And not at the disease, as she did, but at my child. I have a history of having a hard time seeing past the circumstances and laying blame at the right place. I worry that I would be the kind of person who said, Buck up! Shake it off! instead of finding a way to redirect my frustration toward the disease. I'm thankful that I married someone whose talents and gifts fill in the gaps I leave open as we parent our children together. But if I was a single parent? I shudder to think about where I would be had I been in her shoes.

Anyway, the coolest thing about this book is that SAMMY GETS BETTER. I'm not spoiling it for you, the ending is splashed all over the cover. Sammy was eventually diagnosed with PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcus Infections). In layman's terms, this basically means a strep infection was the root of Sammy's disorder. PANDAS research is still relatively new, so Maloney wrote this book (which she says was a painful journey) to try to educate others. In fact, one doctor estimates that there may be as many as 500,000 children in the United States affected by PANDAS. Half a million kids suffering from behavioral disorders, some of them SEVERE, all possibly caused by a strep infection. That's incredible information that apparently, most doctors are still unaware exists.

If I had one complaint about the book, it would be that at times it seemed a little disjointed; it doesn't always flow nicely. I understand that Maloney isn't a trained writer, and it isn't like the book is poorly written or anything, I just would have liked more detail and more background in some areas, and less in others (for example, each chapter begins with a descriptive page or two about Maine weather, and while I could see that those descriptions were to give us some sense of time, I sometimes felt they got in the way of me getting to the next part of the story). And I never felt really and truly MOVED by the writing. It's an amazing, awesome story, don't get me wrong, but it didn't inspire a lot of emotion in me. And it doesn't usually take much for me to turn on the waterworks. I cry at commercials.

That said. I think it's a fascinating read. I love medical mysteries (one of my favorite television shows? MYSTERY DIAGNOSIS) and I loved the happy ending, and as horrible as it was, it was really fascinating to get a first-hand account of what severe OCD is really like. I hope this book does what Maloney hoped it would – gets the word out that PANDAS exists, and that it can be treated.

Comments

[Amanda]

Stories like this fascinate me. I just requested it from the library. Thanks!

[Megan]

I am SO GLAD this has a happy ending. I can't read medical mysteries where the patient dies/gets worse. I'll have to check this out. Thanks for the heads up!

[HereWeGoAJen]

This sounds really interesting. I will have to check it out!

[Cass]

I am such a sucker for memoirs because most of the time it's better than fiction. Thanks for the review, I'll have to pick this up.

[Swistle]

GET THIS. There was a boy at our bus stop who suddenly got all squirrelly (like, not wanting to get on the bus, having panic attacks), and his mom said the doctor said it was almost certainly because the boy had had strep. Me: WHUH?

[Lisamm]

I love that Medical Mysteries show on TV too!

This is a great review. I'm so glad you liked the book. Thanks so much for the time spent reading/reviewing Saving Sammy. It is much appreciated!

[2littleones]

I also would get mad at my child instead of the disease, if I were in those shoes I think and agree with you. Its hard to get why someone does something(especially when they were normal before) and not think its a "cry for attention" instead of the more serious condition. it might be slightly selfish but at the same time, i really don't think i could handle a special needs child. i'm not set up like that so thank god i have 2 healthy ones.

And mystery diagnosis is like one of the best shows ever, i like watching the ones i've already seen with my husband and pretending i havent seen it and then saying all casual like "sounds like the spinal fluid is dripping in her brain" and then he says "gosh wife, how do you know that" and then i say "all those years of watching greys anatomy and scrubs".

[Lisamm]

I came back to add something to my comment and now I can't even remember what it was because I'm too busy laughing at the comment from 2littleones, about how she fakes her husband out while watching Mystery Diagnosis!!! Too funny!

I have two girls, one with ADHD, and wow is she a handful. You do wonder why kids do what they do, and many days I do not have the required patience to deal with her. I can't imagine what life for Beth must have been like during Sammy's illness.

[Amy --- Just A Titch]

God, I wonder if I have some weird disease that causes me to be such an OCD weirdo. Seriously, though---this book sounds amazing. I'd love to read it.

[Parsing Nonsense]

Great review! Doesn't knowing that that kind of thing exists out there scare the pants off you, though? Imagine struggling to help your child cope with OCD when all the while strep was the real issue? Goodness...

[Elementary Teacher]

Are you pregnant?! I don't have twitter but I see those updates!

[Alexandra]

I just heard on the news that a little girl that sneezed on average 8 times per minute was diagnosed with PANDAS. When I saw the report I immediately thought of this post and the book. Good to see that the media is shedding a little bit of light on the disease.