Model Patient

Not long ago, Karen Duffy was sitting on top of the world and loving it. From calling bingo in a nursing home, she'd taken the express elevator to the penthouse overlooking success street. She worked as a VJ on MTV, as a spokesmodel for Revlon, as a film actress in Dumb and Dumber and other movies, and as a correspondent on Michael Moore's irreverent, Emmy-winning TV Nation. She was selected as one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" in the same year she won the Ernest Borgnine Look-alike Contest. But suddenly Duffy's whirlwind life of celebrity parties and socializing with friends from George Clooney to Jim Carrey to Richard Gere came to an abrupt, grinding halt when she was stricken with a serious illness in one of its rarest forms: sarcoidosis of the central nervous system. The disease left her partially paralyzed, in tremendous pain, and at times near death. Although she had a serious disease, Duffy soon realized that the only way for her to survive was not to take the disease too seriously. Instead of hiding from life, she chose to run toward it. She learned to embrace the chaos of a life-threatening disease with a wit and humor that helped her to find the love of her life at a time when things seemed darkest. Model Patient is a gripping, inspiring, and hilarious memoir that recounts the singular triumphs and tragedies of coping with a chronic, life-threatening disease. Model Patient is an unforgettable, illumnating story that captures Duff's indomitable joie de vivre, revealing how she lives and how she has survived.