Trying to Spiff up the Book Cover

Here is the letter I sent to the graphic artist who will be working on my book cover:

I hope you can capture the absolute wonder and joy people experience when they come to this doctor in pain, sometimes after years of failed treatments, and finally, finally, get their life back. The second patient story is titled "The Million Dollar Man," who had racked up a million dollars in medical bills when he arrived at Dr. Rhdoes' office, skeptical but desperate. He was on a morphine pump, which left him with in a zombie like state. After his treatment, he could play with his grandchildren.

You have to have talked to these people in person and seen them come in wheel chairs and leave weeks later walking to understand the dramatic change in their lives. Imagine, if you can, that your life is a nightmare of pain. You have tried conventional medicine with its surgeries, epidurals, amputations, heavy duty drugs, nerve blocks, implants, water immersion, ice packs, hot packs, all the while being told it's all in your head. Every doctor has a different opinion about what to do, but none of it works. A few patients have been on the verge of death due to drugs.

Then you come to South Texas to a doctor and a treatment you have never heard of until a desperate relative found this guy on the Internet who claimed to have a painless, non-invasive, drug free treatment that could actually make you better. Not only does he say he can make you better, but his goal, which he achieves in the majority of his patients, is to get you pain free.

He does a few odd tests on you, says you have the type of pain he can treat, and then hooks you up to a machine with electrodes, and either right away, or in a few days or a week or two, you begin to feel better. You have your ups an downs, but for the first time in years you can actually sleep soundly. Your pain level begins to subside, and you are astonished. You talk to other patients who have been treated longer than you have, and they rave about their progress. You feel even more encouraged. Years of pain. Years of it. And here is a simple-looking treatment that actually works when nothing else has. You can't believe it. But it's working.

You buy a machine, and when you have been pain free for a certain amount of time, you go back home and continue treatments. You may have to treat yourself regularly for the rest of your life. You may recover to the point where you need the machine periodically. Or you may never have to use it again once you reach optimal recovery. Only time will tell. But You Got Your Life Back. You may have to return to the doctor for periodic tune ups. But at some point in the future, if the doctor can get funding for large clinical studies and prove to the established medical community that this treatment does what it does, he may train enough doctors and have upgraded equipment so that people can get this treatment in their own home towns. And if his recognition is wide spread, people in pain will opt for this as their first line of defense against chronic pain, not their last.

Sorry, I didn't mean to get carried away. But this book is the book of my heart, and I wanted to give you a sense of what it means not only to me, but of what it can mean to people in chronic pain. And there are 70 million of them in the United States. My amateurish book cover and book layout are a detriment to having this doctor taken seriously. Only a very professional cover and interior layout will be taken seriously by the media. And that can happen only if I can promote this book so that it catches the eye of the media because of large sales on Amazon.

Been a long time since I stopped by and chatted. But I finally got the book posted on Amazon, and I am eager to promote it.

My purpose is to let folks in pain know about Dr. Donald Rhodes and what he can do for them. In that vein, I have spent an inordinate amount of time getting to this point. Seems the gremlins who live in my computer delight at throwing their little monkey wrenches into my projects and then howl with laughter when they frustrate me beyond words.

However, I regularly stick out my tongue at the little varmints and plod on in spite of them.

My latest endeavor is to get the book cover redone professionally and the interior relaid out. Seems that if I want Dr. Rhodes to have a chance for big time recognition, any book that might sell enough on Amazon to draw media attention has to look spiffy. My attempt to put this book together myself shows my lack of graphic arts skills.

However, the information in the book was written by a professional writer, me. I have an extensive professional writing background and felt I had the skills to transcribe and revise Dr. Rhodes' story from tapes of his talks, to interview and guide patients in putting together their own stories, and to select somewhat technical information to back up Dr. Rhdoes' explanations of his methods.

So, I hope soon to have a new cover to upload. Then I will begin the process of getting the word out about the marvelous things this doctor is doing to banish chronic pain.