For Dr. Margaret Nowaczyk, a pediatrician specializing in rare genetic disorders in children, chasing zebras—finding the right but less obvious or rare diagnosis—has been a decades-long journey. Her memoir Chasing Zebras looks at the isolation, loneliness, and trauma of giving terrible, life-altering diagnoses to parents and how necessary it is to have coping mechanisms to deal with the pain and heartache involved.

From leaving Communist Poland to enduring the demands of medical school, through living with a long undiagnosed mental illness to discovering the fascinating field of genetics, plunging into the pressures of prenatal diagnosis, and finally finding the tools of writing and narrative medicine, Margaret shares a journey that is both inspiring and harrowing. This is a story of constant effort, growth, tragedy, triumph—and most of all, of the importance of openness. In the end, Dr. Nowaczyk invites us all to see that "life is precious and fragile and wondrous and full of mistakes." And to keep trying.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Margaret Nowaczyk arrived in Canada as a teen with an English vocabulary deeply influenced by the few English books she had, including Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil. She made her way through medical school at the University of Toronto, followed by residencies at Toronto's SickKids until she settled at McMaster University Hospital as a clinical geneticist. Her writing has appeared in many Canadian and American literary magazines, and her non-fiction has won or been shortlisted for various literary awards.