Run Over

A moving memoir in the tradition of A Leg to Stand On and Intoxicated by My Illness –intimate, fearless, funny, shocking, painful and, in little mortal flashes, very wise.

Run Over is about being hit by a truck at fourteen, and the ripples of that accident in Douglas Bell’s life. Marooned in hospital at the exact point at which he was beginning to leave the shelter of his parents and launch himself at the world, instead Bell simply recovered, under the watchful eye of a fiercely loving and anxious mother.

From his foot-thick medical record, from interviews with the many doctors who saved his life, from conversations with his parents and friends, and from his own sometimes wildly inaccurate memories, Bell has reconstructed the boy who was crushed by a truck, the scarred survivor driven by panic and masked by wit. As a result of the accident he’s still prone to life-threatening attacks of pancreatitis. Illness interrupted his life; a literal sense of mortality walks with him most days. His book asks, simply, how do we truly get over something?

The story of Bell’s accident takes him in the end right back to his mother, and the last section of the book is about her battle with breast cancer and what her son finally understands about love. That’s where Bell finally finds his resolution, his reconciliation and his healing.