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

The fashion reporter opens up about her struggle with debilitating arthritis and her attempts to hide it in the image-obsessed world of Hollywood. Forty-six million people suffer from arthritis. But as a fashion reporter married to a powerful movie executive, Christine Schwab couldn’t let a devastating disease associated with ageing and disfigurement take over her life. So rather than let that happen, she decided to hide it—a skill she learned all too well in childhood. Christine 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. Between her career and personal life, she traveled, dined with celebrities, and met U.S. presidents. But maintaining such a lifestyle while hiding her unrelenting pain required an ongoing charade of lies and deception. In Take Me Home from the Oscars, Schwab openly speaks of her arthritis for the first time and shares the lessons she learned when she could no longer hide. A turning point came when her pain was so intense that she had to leave her tenth-row Oscar. From her nineteen-year journey through the UCLA Medical Center to more than twenty years on national television, Schwab brings readers along on an epic search to finally find remission.