Sunday, April 3, 2022

The Invisible Kingdom

by Meghan O'Rourke  (2022)

This book is the pathography of a woman with functional somatic symptoms. Pathographies come in three classes, quest, restitution, and chaos. The early part of this book, at least, is a chaos story.
In my opinion, this is an important book; one that is worth studying.

Publisher's summary: A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans: These are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier.

DJE's notes on the book  available on request