LUPUS NOVICE: Toward Self Healing Paperback – August 1, 1999

I feel this is a wonderful, inspiring book not to give up. I had symptoms of Lupus years ago and bought this book then and although an older printing now, it is still worthwhile today. The author really worked to find answers and a better way to live with her condition. I often "gift" this book to people who have a diagnosis using traditional medicine to see that it is possible to use alternative, non-toxic treatments as well. It also gives a good view of what it is like from the patient's view for those relatives or friends who do not have the condition and don't begin to understand. She was situated in the San Francisco Bay area at the time of her diagnosis and represents a lady of her times of the period of which she wrote. You get a sense with this book, the suffering, even if you only want to learn more about it coming away with a sense of the spirit of this woman. She has some wonderful quotes in the book that I saved to encourage my life along.

I think "Lupus Novice" is a best read for poetic, New Age (in this case, George Steiner) readers, but anyone with Lupus or any chronic illness should find it very worthwhile, insightful, and helpful.This said, for a personal account, "Lupus Novice" seems strangely impersonal. The few interest rousing moments of personal revelation, tension, and criticism, are fairly quickly muted and/or never returned to. Also, I think the social and political dimension of modern chronic illnesses like Lupus, CFS, MS, Lyme, and so forth, all of which grow daily in number, might receive much more attention because they are so absent in the media.

This is a good read for anybody with a chronic disorder, not just Lupus. It documents the personal challenges of living life while investigating possible remedies while steadily become your own advocate.

I found this book by accident in a bookstore one day, and ended up on the floor reading the whole thing in one sitting. It is a compelling and insightful account of the author's journey towards healing from SLE, exploring various natural and conventional therapies, and eventually finding relief using anthroposophical medicine, a system somewhat like homeopathy developed by Rudolph Steiner. This also led me to investigate this form of medicine and the field of anthroposophy in general.

Laura Chester is a gem. She writes and excellent journey of her issues with Lupus SLE. It is a wonderful insight to her soul and can help hundreds in dealing with this terrible disease. I think a big, big, big part of the diary is how she discribes her physician, Dr. Jesse Stoff. This medical doctor writes the forward to this amazing book and is mentioned many times on how he helped Laura understand this disease and what she had to go through to immune her immune function and left her body beat the disease. What Lupus patients have to understand is that Laura Chester's journey and experience is being true to herself on why the disease happened in the first place because of stress and imbalanced lifestyles and dealing with infection. All of these things are outlined in Dr. Jesse Stoff's two other books, The Prostate Miracle and Chronic Fatiuge Syndrome: The Hidden Epidemic. What's interesting in the updated version of Lupus Novice is that Laura doesn't even remember a lot of the pains she went through because she's on the road to recovery and that the past has nothing to do with her future of wellness, since it was her past issues in her life that caused the stress which lead to her disease. This is truely a fasinating book that I recommend at our Institute of Anti-Aging and Longevity to all our Lupus patients along with Dr. Stoff's other two books. In fact, the American Lupus Foundation, highly recommends Lupus Novice also to all the people with Lupus. Again, an outstanding book about, love, compassion, determination, self-actualization and witnessing to all those who suffer from lupus. Anyone interested in the protocals that Dr. Stoff applied to Laura Chester can email us at the Institute of Anti-Aging and Longevity... or call us at 1-800-878-6659 and we will be more than glad to put you on the road to recovery.

Book was good value for money charged, but do not agree with rave comments regarding content of book, was extremely badly written and unhelpful to anyone suffering from LUPUS.