Above the Din

A 49-year-old woman tended her garden outside of the Chicago suburban home she shared with her husband and daughter. Extended family lived close by. She had a job that she loved. Life didn’t get any better than this. One phone call changed everything.

A random blood test had just revealed that she had hepatitis C, contracted from a blood transfusion 30 years prior. The only treatment at the time offered less than a 50% chance for cure and came with a plethora of nasty side effects. Labar Laskie said no to this risky treatment and for the next 15 years, while waiting for a cure, she took extraordinary measures to keep her symptoms at bay, calm her fears, and lift her spirits. Above the Din is her story.

A cure did come, in the form of the miracle drugs – Sovaldi + Olysio. She takes us on her 84-day treatment regimen and recounts her 15-year odyssey of alternative treatments, extreme sports, and personal crises. Funny and poignant, her story is also an accessible treatise on hepatitis C, its causes, symptoms, treatments – and the threat it still poses to millions of people worldwide. Lona Powell’s illustrations bring the whole story to colorful life.

This is a must-read for those with chronic illness (of any type), clinicians, and lovers of memoir.