In the summer of 2008, Simon Paradis suffered a fall from a scaffolding onto stone tile, damaging his brain and spinal cord. Since then he has lived with chronic pain
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The Pain Project
Kara Stanley with Simon Paradis | Greystone Books
$26.95 | 330pp.
In the blink of an eye, everything changed.
The Pain Project, co-written with Paradis’ wife Kara Stanley, is an account of how this remarkably bright and brave couple lived with the world-transforming pain that continues to torment Paradis. It focuses on their year long pain project, launched a decade into their struggles, and it records journal entries, experts consulted and research, as well as the couple’s often poignant conversations with each other and the friends and family who support them still. The sustaining roles of music, laughter and food are vividly portrayed.
This luminously written book is both a self-help guide for those confronting chronic pain and a tender portrait of a marriage tested to the limits of for better or for worse.
The authors would be the first to acknowledge that they confront the scalding realities of chronic pain from a position of some privilege — secure housing, access to publicly funded health care and, crucially, a supportive family and community, and a strong, vibrant marriage. Chronic pain exists within a complex combination of biological, social, and psychological factors, and bears more heavily on the poor, the marginalized, the isolated and the racialized. That said, even the privileged suffer, and the authors do not flinch from portraying their pain.
Highly recommended.