Life in Rewind - by Terry Weible Murphy & Michael A Jenike & Edward E Zine (Paperback)

About the Book

A surprising tale of success by medical science confronted with a nearly insurmountable disorder. Well-rounded, powerful, and inspirational. Kirkus Reviews In the vein of Manic and Girl, Interrupted, and the popular stories of Oliver Sacks, Life in Rewind is the captivating true story of promising young athlete Ed Zine s sudden descent into severe mental illness, and the brilliant Harvard doctor, Michael A. Jenike, who broke through the boundaries of traditional medicine to save him. Written by Terry Weible Murphy with Zine and Jenike, Life in Rewind provides a shocking picture of severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the surprising and unorthodox lengths to which a doctor goes to help his patient. The Washington Times calls this, [An] extraordinary story. It is that and much more."

Book Synopsis

"A surprising tale of success by medical science confronted with a nearly insurmountable disorder. Well-rounded, powerful, and inspirational."

--Kirkus Reviews

In the vein of Manic and Girl, Interrupted, and the popular stories of Oliver Sacks, Life in Rewind is the captivating true story of promising young athlete Ed Zine's sudden descent into severe mental illness, and the brilliant Harvard doctor, Michael A. Jenike, who broke through the boundaries of traditional medicine to save him. Written by Terry Weible Murphy with Zine and Jenike, Life in Rewind provides a shocking picture of severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the surprising and unorthodox lengths to which a doctor goes to help his patient. The Washington Times calls this, "[An] extraordinary story." It is that and much more.

From the Back Cover

"Time equals progression--progression equals death."

This mantra held Ed Zine prisoner in the basement of his father's Cape Cod home. A handsome, athletic twenty-four-year-old suffering from a debilitating form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, he thought that going forward in time moved him closer to death, and that reversing the action would prevent it. Trapped in a ritualistic nightmare, Zine would spend nearly ten hours a day making the 16,384 precise movements necessary to get from his bed to the bathroom. Then he met Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Michael Jenike. One of the world's leading OCD physicians, Jenike took on Ed Zine's seemingly impossible case, breaking medicine's cardinal rule in the process: he offered the tragically disabled young man not only his professional help...but his friendship and trust, which ultimately led Zine to create his own coping skills to heal himself.

Life in Rewind is a miraculous true story of commitment and determination, darkness and hope, love and inspiration.

Review Quotes

A respected, compassionate psychiatrist unchains a man from the grips of crippling mental disorder. For the past 30 years, co-author Jenike (Psychiatry/Harvard Medical School) has dedicated his medical practice to the study of obsessive-compulsive disorder. This should have more than qualified him to manage Zine, a muscular 24-year-old from Cape Cod stricken with a severe case of OCD. But Jenike, often criticized by his peers for becoming "overinvolved" (he still makes house calls), considered Zine the greatest challenge of his career. At their first meeting, the young man emerged from a putrid live-in basement strewn with bagged and bottled human waste; he hadn't showered or changed his clothes in more than a year. Zine's condition--"logic gone completely awry"--was rooted in a belief that as each minute moved him toward death, he could effectively retard aging by exercising tiny, precise back and forth "rituals within rituals" that could make getting across a room take seven hours. It took a full year of visits before Zine, a former athlete, would allow Jenike into the "organized chaos" of his cellar sanctum. The devastating death of Zine's beloved mother when he was a boy appeared to have exacerbated his condition. Jenike, who returned from active service in the Vietnam War with posttraumatic stress disorder, had a "profound depth of compassion" that, while it couldn't "cure" Zine, definitely worked wonders. He progressed from showering for the first time in a year to marrying a local girl, starting a family and moving into a new house. TV correspondent Murphy delivers Zine's story in sympathetic, never mawkish tones, offering not just a fascinating case history but a surprising tale of success by medical science confronted with a nearly insurmountable disorder. Well-rounded, powerful and inspirational. - Kirkus Reviews
This isn't a memoir so much as an inspiring doctor/patient success tale. TV correspondent Murphy chronicles how Michael Jenike, M.D., broke through Edward Zine's seemingly impenetrable obsessive-compulsive disorder by breaking a rule--befriending his patient. - Library Journal