How Mystery Illness Spent 10 Years of Health on a Writer

Invisible kingdom
Rethinking chronic diseases
Megan O’Rourke

When the first contemporary iterations by authors such as Kay Redfield Jamison and William Styron were published, the memoirs of the illness, which seemed so astounding and courageous, are now fairly standard fares. am. They tend to follow the formula to reach aposeosis, either by the author overcoming the illness and thanking the lesson, or by surrendering for suffering and writing the last page wisely, but sometimes talking to the heirs. May be put together. In other words, such books are sometimes inspirational, sometimes quiet and tragic, but usually redeeming. Introspection about illness has become so commonplace that it is almost impossible to bring freshness to a project.

This makes Megan Oruk’s “Invisible Kingdom” a profound, sometimes lyrical, inspiring portrayal of a vague series of illnesses that is even more remarkable. She steers between the cynical Scylla and the Romantic Charybdis, achieving a genuine original voice and, perhaps more surprisingly, a genuine original perspective. A poet of choice and, inevitably an interpreter of medical doctrine, she gives graceful discipline to her account of the horrifying decades lost by hypochondriasis and misdiagnosis or dismissed overdetermined symptoms. Bring. O’Rourke is not afraid to deeply understand the depth of her pain. She nods to underprivileged people whose condition like her leads to medical negligence and occasional bankruptcy, but it’s not good for hungry children in developing countries who are exacerbating it. This book is partly read like a good mystery. She hints that she’s good from the beginning, but she’s always guessing which doctor or intervention made the decisive difference. Her main complaints appear to have been Lyme disease with some form of autoimmunity and microbiota complexity, but these diagnoses generate or co-exist with other complaints. In her worst case, “my body was made of sand and I felt like molasses had invaded my brain.” Over and over again, she finds enough language for her severe weakness.

This book is not only a memoir of her illness, but also a document of many years of research, some of which is for this book, but many of which are just to keep her sane. “My ability to store information felt like the only control I still have,” she writes, with an average of three years and four doctors diagnosing autoimmune diseases. It is said that it will take. During this period, patients were often told to imagine the symptoms they felt very clearly, as she did, so it is often unbelievable. “The special fear of being left behind, not just sick,” said O’Rourke. “Your testimony was rejected because your laboratory work does not match existing patterns.” .. Some of her trust in the doctor was naive or rude, but she revealed her stubbornness, the backbone of her book. In some cases, her courage was misguided. “Many of us have no choice but to shrug into the hands of unreliable people for help,” she writes. But she had to endure: not only because she couldn’t bear the condition she had, but also because enduring the reality of her suffering made her at least vaguely recognizable. .. “The illness was terrible, but it was invisible, and its invisibility made all the difference — it was. myself Invisible, it almost killed me. There is little congratulations in her book, but it is a document of her refusal to be invisible, the victory of her dedication to continuous unity. “Where science is silent, the story creeps up,” she writes, and the construction of her story is her last defense.

The experience of illness is one of the dependencies, and today’s social practices consider it a weakness. “When you’re sick, your need is pushed inside your chest and the ball goes up from your throat,” O’Rourke writes. “I portrayed it as a thick, viscous, toxic gel that slipped off me the moment I couldn’t do anything else.” O’Rourke was terribly ill, with strange neurological cramps. There was a sudden and painful sensation. Persistent brain fog has made it nearly impossible to function. With a strange digestive intolerance, she tried to relieve her through modest dietary restrictions. She stayed in bed for days at a time and took a break just to see another doctor. She explains that she is presumed to have embodied sadness and trauma, and that she seems to be erasing the “stubborn reality of the body.” Still her body was everything she could live in. “I thought I couldn’t stay in my body box anymore-still I had to.”