Take Me Home from the Oscars: Arthritis, Television, Fashion, and Me

( 1 )

All Available Formats + Editions

——

$16.96

NOOK Book

——

$16.96

Take Me Home from the Oscars (eBook) Pub. Date: 5/1/2011 Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
$9.99

$17.95

Hardcover

$9.99

$17.95

Take Me Home from the Oscars: Arthritis, Television, Fashion, and Me Pub. Date: 5/1/2011 Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

Advertising

Overview

Forty-six million people suffer from arthritis. Frustrated with the lies, driven to deceit by a career that celebrates beauty and fashion, lifestyle reporter Christine Schwab is not most people. She managed to keep her illness a secret for years, even as a recurring guest on Live with Regis & Kelly, Oprah!, The Today Show, Entertainment Tonight, and elsewhere. She juggled her career with a thrilling personal life in Hollywood: married to Shelly Schwab, then the president of television distribution at Universal Studios, she traveled, dined with celebrities, and met presidents of the United States. How could she allow a devastating disease associated with aging and disfigurement to take over her life?

Rather than let it, she hid it—a skill learned well in childhood. In Take Me Home from the Oscars, Schwab openly speaks of her arthritis for the first time, looking to her past for clues of how she managed the deception, but also of lessons learned when she could no longer hide. A turning point came when she had to leave her tenth-row Oscar seat because she was in too much pain to sit for even a moment longer. From her nineteen-year journey through the UCLA Medical Center to the exhilaration of more than twenty years of appearing on national television, Schwab’s voice is at once smart and friendly. The reader will root for her at every step, and cheer when, through medication, she ultimately finds remission.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

It is hard to combine the chic required of a TV fashion and beauty reporter and stylist with the sober accommodations demanded by a debilitating autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis. Lifestyle maven Schwab tried for years and wound up sick, sore, and tired (in sneakers). Her efforts to hide what she considered a disease of the old and disfigured exhausted her almost as much as the illness itself. Her return to a life of high heels and jet-setting forms the center of this book-length equivalent of a magazine makeover.What I Am Telling My Friends Schwab was hung up on concealing her "ugly" disease and, for good measure, drops some names and dishes some dirt. The hard work here was done by her doctors, so it's not easy to be sympathetic to her distraught saga. — "Memoir Short Takes," Booksmack! 1/20/11

Kirkus Reviews

A behind-the-scenes look at how a Hollywood insider survived in daytime television despite the pain of living with rheumatoid arthritis.

When TV makeover expert and fashion consultant Schwab (The Grown-Up Girl's Guide to Style: A Maintenance Bible for Fashion, Beauty, and More..., 2006, etc.) was diagnosed with arthritis at a relatively young age, she learned to hide her debilitating pain to maintain an image of physical and professional perfection. In doing so, Schwab lied to everyone in her life including her supportive husband, experimented with myriad combinations of medications and ducked out of public responsibilities, including a hasty exit from the Academy Awards on swollen feet. Weaving in unpleasant tales from her childhood, the author works through the issues that led to her compulsion to appear flawless, regardless of the cost. "Being neat and clean with my outfits matching were lessons that served me in my childhood and my career," she writes. "But when disease struck, arthritis marched over everything, not caring what it destroyed." After seven years of faithfully taking failed pharmaceuticals despite visible, toxic and even life-threatening side effects, her dedication to the process paid off and she found one that worked for her, enabling her to continue her career and lifestyle as before. While the conclusion may seem superficial with its abrupt happily-ever-after, Schwab's book unexpectedly serves as an interesting observation of the pharmaceutical industry and the doctor-patient relationship. But the author's also tuned into the cravings of her audience, and doesn't skimp when offering the inside scoop on daytime TV: the reckless process of TV makeovers, how to schmooze a producer and the wonders of Oprah.

An inspirational alternative to People at the doctor's office.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781616082642
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Publication date: 5/1/2011
Pages: 240
Sales rank: 130,481
Product dimensions: 6.02 (w) x 9.16 (h) x 0.96 (d)

Meet the Author

Christine Schwab is a fashion, beauty, and lifestyle television reporter and author. She has been a recurring guest on Oprah!, NBC Nightly News, CBS's The Early Show, The Today Show, Live with Regis and Kelly, Entertainment Tonight, The Insider, Rachael Ray, Inside Edition, and E! Entertainment. Schwab has also been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine; Newsweek; Vanity Fair; Ladies Home Journal; Women’s World; The Chicago Tribune; The Huffington Post; and the Washington Post Book Magazine/Sunday. She is author of Quickstyle and The Grown-Up Girl’s Guide to Style. Schwab lives in Newport and Beverly Hills, California.

1 Nobody Walks Out of the Academy Awards 1

2 Sneakers to the Rescue 13

3 Gulping Tylenol 25

4 No Time for Derailment 31

5 Rockin' to the Pointer Sisters 41

6 Losing Control 55

7 Playing with Fire 65

8 Pepperoni Pizza at Cedars 85

9 Running at Steroid Speed 95

10 An ET Christmas 103

11 Stable Until Ready 109

12 Here Today, Gone Tomorrow 116

13 Oprah, My Best Friend for a Day 129

14 Rejected for the Rat Cage 141

15 Just Do It… 149

16 And the Results Are… 153

17 The Robo Arm Makeover 161

18 The Enbrel Honeymoon 175

19 Nightly and Me 179

20 Double-Dipping at UCLA 185

21 This Grown-Up Girl's Osteo Race 191

22 A Makeover for Arthritis? 197

23 The Future 205

About the Author 210

Acknowledgements 212

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 5

( 1 )

Rating Distribution

( 1 )
( 0 )
( 0 )
( 0 )
( 0 )

If you've bought this product, tell the world how you liked it.

Write a Review

LEGALEYE

Posted December 22, 2011

more from this reviewer

More than a celebrity memoir, more than another book about rheumatoid arthritis

Yesterday, when I picked up Christine Schwab's latest book, Take Me Home from the Oscars. Arthritis, Television, Fashion, and Me, I eagerly anticipated a book about a professional woman, who, like me, has to balance a high-pressure career, marriage, and rheumatoid arthritis. I expected familiar stories about the onset of symptoms, the scary diagnosis, the array of medications, and misery. This book delivered, with honest, heartfelt prose that kept me engaged right to the inspiring ending. Because of the author's fashion and reporting expertise and Hollywood connections, I also anticipated glitz, glamour, big names, and red carpets. Again, this book did not disappoint. Christine's ability to share her RA story and eloquently carry it alongside the memoirs of her exciting and demanding television career provides for a riveting account of this disease.

Today, having just finished Christine's book, I realized it is much more than the brave "Celebrity-With-A-Disease" story that I had expected (which is actually why I bought this book in the first place). As a lawyer, I was impressed with the accuracy of the factual accounts and the credibility of the personal and emotional accounts. As an English major, I was pleasantly surprised at just how literary Take Me Home from the Oscars is, with its inclusion of metaphor and symbolism, for example. The high-fashion, high-heeled shoe images epitomize the fashion industry, but serve as sharp contrast to RA, illustrating the dual-world within which Christine operated - wearing the most stylish of sneakers. I was impressed by how brilliantly Christine juxtapositions the fantasy world with the real world. She weaves in the themes of denial and loss of control throughout the book by flashing back to childhood memories amid her twenty-year RA progression. Just as Christine could not control being "boarded out" by her mother as a child, and the sense of loss she felt back then, RA seemed to be controlling her life at its peak, threatening a new marriage and all she had worked for professionally. Her defense mechanism - both as a child and as a professional woman with a chronic illness - consisted of denial and pretend (as in a make-believe, television world). Just as she persevered after a difficult and lonely childhood, and with determination and ambition became a fashion and television success, she has taken control of her disease. Through smart, passionate writing, she is now inspiring others to do the same.

Of course, RA is chronic and life-long; her battle is not over just because the book ends. But we are left with a sufficiently feel-good ending and a strong sense of hope. I am grateful that she no longer keeps her RA a secret because her strong voice raises awareness and hope for people with RA. I know that my RA friends will read this book and I have no doubt they will be glad they did. I wish my healthy friends would read it so they could understand this disease and the way it greatly impacts the lives of its victims - even powerhouses like Christine Schwab. Anybody who lives with RA or who has a loved one with RA should read this book. Even if you care nothing about RA, perhaps someone you care about suffers with this disease but keeps it a secret, like Christine (and I) did for many years. At the very least, you'll enjoy the "Hollywood tell-all" (Entertainment Tonight) aspect of this book!
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble