Chasing Hope: A Patient’s Deep Dive into Stem Cells, Faith, and the Future

Former TV news producer Cohen charts his search for hope in a light but generally tepid medical memoir. Diagnosed with MS in 1973 at age 25, Cohen realized that his coping mechanisms of denial and withdrawal (which he discussed in his memoir Blindsided) resulted in isolation, frustration, and family rancor. “I had to find a way to rise above the daily grind of illness,” he writes. While hosting a stem cell conference in 2012, he began to entertain hope for a healthier future, despite having undergone “almost forty years of fruitless treatments.” A funny, straightforward narrator (“That doctor had the people skills of a prison guard, minus the charm”), Cohen pursues hope as an intellectual inquiry, interviewing scientists, people who have experienced loss, and diverse religious thinkers. The relationship between hope and faith is an intriguing one, but Cohen dedicates a disproportionate amount of time to it while giving short shrift to themes of regaining lost hope, and how doctors can foster hope in patients. Cohen describes his own stem cell treatment and life-threatening blood clot; however, readers get little sense of how hope helps him deal with these new medical issues. Cohen’s journey is entertaining, but it lacks substance. (May)