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Against Medical Advice: One Family’s Struggle with an Agonizing Medical Mystery

James Patterson, Hal Friedman and Cory Friedman
Little, Brown and Company (2008)
ISBN 9780316024754
Reviewed by Narayan Radhakrishnan for RebeccasReads (10/08)

I have bitten my nails while reading James Patterson suspense thrillers. I have lost sleep many nights being engrossed in James Patterson works. His thrillers have always been either spine chilling or heart pounding, but never, ever have they brought tears to my eyes.  After reading “Against Medical Advice,” tears came to my eyes; I cried, and I never thought that such a contingency would arise on reading a James Patterson novel. 

To call “Against Medical Advice” a mystery, or even a novel, would not be wholly right. It is the true story of the life of author Hal Friedman’s son, Cory Friedman, whose ordeal combating Tourette’s Syndrome, a “medical mystery,” carried on for more than thirteen years.  This is the first I’ve heard about Tourette’s Syndrome. I searched the Internet and found several hits. But the impact of the syndrome is best told in Cory Friedman’s words themselves, which I quote:

“One morning in March of 1989, just before my fifth birthday I woke up a normal, healthy boy. By that afternoon, I had an irresistible urge to shake my head- continually, and the course of my life changed in ways few people had seen or could begin to understand. Before long, my body became an explosive, volatile and unpredictable force with a mind and personality of its own. It jerked and twisted, bent in half, and gyrated without warning until I was almost always in motion. I bit down on my teeth until I actually broke them and howled in pain because of the exposed nerves.” (p. vii, “Against Medical Advice”)

The work tells of the harrowing ordeal the Friedman family underwent over the years. The odd feeling of one looking down upon their son as if he were a puppet (or as Cory put it, being a puppet as well as the puppeteer), the way Cory’s life suffered through a battle of endless medicines, drugs and medical tests - with his family living as guinea pigs, etc., are told without mincing words by Patterson and Friedman. The authors never resort to sympathy; it’s a story of understanding, of carving success from the bleakest of circumstances, and ultimately a tale of the never-say-die spirit of the Friedman family. This is a medical thriller…nay a medical mystery with a difference.

I believe that this book should make it to the book section of Reader’s Digest; it really should to be read by more persons. A wonderful and heart wrenching read, James Patterson has really surpassed himself, and added one more feather in his cap as a writer with a wide ranging ability, and one who cannot be bottled into one particular genre.

    

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