Title: Confessions of a teenage leper
Description: "Abby Furlowe has plans. Big plans. She's hot, she's popular, she's a cheerleader and she's going to break out of her small Texas town and make it big. Fame and fortune, adoration and accolades. It'll all be hers. But then she notices some spots on her skin. She writes them off as a rash, but things only get worse. She's tired all the time, her hands and feet are numb and her face starts to look like day-old pizza. By the time her seventeenth birthday rolls around, she's tried every cream and medication the doctors have thrown at her, but nothing works. When she falls doing a routine cheerleading stunt and slips into a coma, her mystery illness goes into overdrive and finally gets diagnosed: Hansen's Disease, aka leprosy. Abby is sent to a facility to recover and deal with this new reality. Her many misdiagnoses mean that some permanent damage has been done, and all of her plans suddenly come tumbling down. If she can't even wear high heels anymore, what is the point of living? Cheerleading is out the window, and she might not even make it to prom. PROM! But it's during this recovery that Abby has to learn to live with something even more difficult than Hansen's Disease. She's becoming aware of who she really was before and what her behavior was doing to others; now she's on the other side of the fence looking in, and she doesn't like what she sees. . ."--Amazon.

Abby Furlowe has big plans. She's hot, she's popular, she's a cheerleader and she's going to break out of her small Texas town and make it big. When she notices some spots on her skin, she writes them off as a rash. Soon she's tired all the time, her hands and feet are numb, and her face starts to look like day-old pizza. Doctors prescribe cremes and medications. When she falls doing a routine cheerleading stunt and slips into a coma, her mystery illness finally gets diagnosed: Hansen's Disease, aka leprosy. The misdiagnoses means some permanent damage has been done, and her plans suddenly come tumbling down. Sent to a facility to recover-- and deal with this new reality-- Abby becomes aware of who she really was before and what her behavior was doing to others. -- adapted from amazon.com.
Subjects: Fiction, Cheerleaders, Teenage girls, Leprosy, High schools, American literature
Places: Texas