Kay Day promotes Killing Earl
By Rachel Haynie

Kay Day

Rebecca Day pleaded with her author/poet mother to write Killing Earl . The book is finally being released this month, but now the 16–year–old refuses to read it. “I don’t have to read it. I lived it.”

The new book by Kay Day is about her younger daughter’s mysterious illness. Rebecca began having symptoms when she was just 12, a sixth grader at Crayton Middle School.

Rebecca’s pain went undiagnosed for weeks that morphed into years, defying modern imaging techniques and baffling a cavalcade of physicians. From her childhood pediatrician, the teen’s medical saga brought her across the womanly threshold where she was examined by a gynecologist.

Nobody could diagnose or even come close to helping Rebecca cope with the abiding pain, so she faced the problem head on by giving it a name, Earl. Identifying the hurt gave it characteristics that enabled the young woman to personify it, talk about it. Naming Earl also may have given her a small sense of power in a situation that left her vulnerable in a health care system that seemed to be failing her.

As Rebecca lost weight and grew weaker, she was unable to attend regular classes at Crayton, so her guidance counselor, Debbie Gold, set up a home school arrangement. In the book, Rebecca’s mother is high in her praise for the attendance officer, Ms Gasden–Crull, and her daughter’s favorite teacher, Ms. Peacock. The home–school teacher, Ms. Elaine Fridy, was described as “an angel on the corner.”

Not being at school played havoc with Rebecca’s social life. A few friends hung in there with her, but as she admitted, she was no fun anymore. Big sister Jennifer and her boyfriend Chris became Rebecca’s window to the world.

Finally, Day’s decades of investigative practice as a writer went into high gear, and she stormed the research beach, turning up leads she converted into questions. Her tenacity brought her in touch with Dr. Prithvi Reddy at Palmetto Health Richland hospital. Day also credits other doctors as central to Rebecca’s eventual successful treatment, as well as Day’s own family doctor from her days growing up in nearby Newberry.

As it turned out, Earl was not one ailment but two. That’s why pinning the disease down had been so difficult. Ran, Rebecca’s father, was offered a promotion which also meant a move to Florida. The family decided not to move for a year so sister Jennifer could graduate from Dreher High School in May, 2001. But becauseof Rebecca’s illness, the family was unable to move for two years.

John V. Campo, one of America’s top doctors and co–editor of The Handbook of Pediatric Psychology and Phychiatry wrote the introduction for Killing Earl . He believes the story began years earlier when Kay Day’s baby brother died of a mysterious and undiagnosed ailment. Day was eight years old at the time. He was the first baby she ever held.

Day will be back in Columbia to sign copies of Killing Earl and visit family and friends Saturday, June 25 at Happy Bookseller.