The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness: A Memoir

By Sarah Ramey

Book Overview

The darkly funny memoir of Sarah Ramey's years-long battle with a mysterious illness that doctors thought was all in her head--but wasn't. A revelation and an inspiration for millions of women whose legitimate health complaints are ignored.

In her harrowing, defiant, and unforgettable memoir, Sarah Ramey recounts the decade-long saga of how a seemingly minor illness in her senior year of college turned into a prolonged and elusive condition that destroyed her health but that doctors couldn't diagnose or treat. Worse, as they failed to cure her, they hinted that her devastating symptoms were psychological.
The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a memoir with a mission: to help the millions of (mostly) women who suffer from unnamed or misunderstood conditions--autoimmune illnesses, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic Lyme disease, chronic pain, and many more. Ramey's pursuit of a diagnosis and cure for her own mysterious illness becomes a page-turning medical mystery that reveals a new understanding of today's chronic illnesses as ecological in nature, driven by modern changes to the basic foundations of health, from the quality of our sleep, diet, and social connections to the state of our microbiomes. Her book will open eyes, change lives, and, ultimately, change medicine.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 030774194X
• ISBN13: 9780307741943
• Release Date: May 2021
• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Thought-provoking and engrossing, first to last

As improbable as it may seem given the topic of The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness, Ms Ramey's account of her fifteen-year struggle with a host of debilitating physical ailments is a thoroughly enjoyable read. To be clear, it is harrowing as well. What else could seemingly intractable and undiagnosable ailments that leave one collapsed on the floor be? It is heart-rending to witness her daily suffering. She nevertheless writes every sentence with an honesty, clarity, and directness (and, astonishingly, with great humor) that makes all that darkness something we can join her in facing, and in understanding. Ms Ramey is a voracious learner. And so there is information to be found here, as well; a lot of it. She has a light touch when it comes to these layers of details that makes them a pleasure to take in. You will learn a great deal about how women's bodies work. You will also learn about how the medical system works - and does not work - to help women care for themselves. And this, for most of us, is where the greatest importance of the book is to be found. As much as it is the odyssey of her illness, The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is also an exploration of the dismissive, condescending, and usually unseen ways in which society in general, and medicine in particular, treat not only the bodies of women, but the world of women. Women will find themselves mirrored in Ms. Ramey's book. And illuminated, as well. This is at once a celebration of determination, reason, trust, learning, openness, and the feminine. You do not need to have a mysterious illness to find this book engrossing, thought-provoking, and useful. I have sent copies of it to the women in my life to remind them of the voice they have and to encourage them to make it heard. If you are a woman, you ought to read this book. If you are a man, you really ought to read it.