“And what is it I’m waiting for now?“
“Days Like Dogs“ is a moving account of loneliness and shame, of sickness and death. Yet at the same time, it is a cheerful, encouraging book about friendship and love and about the freedom of literature.
It’s a Tuesday, just a few months after her 50th birthday, when Ruth Schweikert is diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer. Foreboding and fear turn into reality. But what kind of reality is this? What goes inside someone who finds herself caged in by thoughts and images, by technology and appointments? What happens with her body? What do I think I know about cancer? And what, actually, is it that I am waiting for, sleepless in my bed at night or in one of the many doctors’ anterooms when the next “results“ are due?
Nothing is certain in Ruth Schweikert’s new book, in which she attempt to give a radically precise account of her own illness. This book is about sleepless nights, about needles and catheters. And it is about writing and reading and the possibilities offered by text messages.
