Reviews tagging 'Chronic illness'

What Doesn't Kill You: A Life with Chronic Illness - Lessons from a Body in Revolt by Tessa Miller

38 reviews

nhackley's review

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness, Addiction, Vomit, Toxic relationship, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual assault, Panic attacks/disorders, Medical trauma, Medical content, Grief, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, and Alcoholism

kyullua's review

inspiring reflective slow-paced

3.25

I wished it had focused more on the memoir part. I loved those.
What made me lower the score was the focus on the american healthcare system, which while I understand the needs to some of the readers I expected to hear more about coping and living with IBD and someone with IBD myself
I related to a lot of what the author said but felt like the developing “connection” (if you can call it that) was cut halfway through it with a lot of info regarding the medical system there

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness

Minor: Death of parent and Alcoholism

atokuyama's review

emotional informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Death of parent, Panic attacks/disorders, Excrement, Grief, Sexual assault, Medical trauma, Mental illness, and Chronic illness

Moderate: Blood, Pandemic/Epidemic, Drug abuse, Fatphobia, Addiction, Death, Alcoholism, Eating disorder, Suicidal thoughts, Drug use, Domestic abuse, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Misogyny, Ableism, and Gaslighting

rockyroadbutch's review

emotional hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Excrement, Medical trauma, Chronic illness, Medical content, and Blood

Moderate: Mental illness, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Ableism, Pandemic/Epidemic, Suicidal thoughts, Panic attacks/disorders, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, and Grief

skillwithaquill's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Medical trauma, Excrement, Chronic illness, and Grief

Moderate: Addiction, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, and Rape

bayleereads's review against another edition

challenging informative sad medium-paced

4.0

I finished this one a couple weeks ago and still haven’t written a review because I have so many thoughts about it. I found this book to be an excellent hybrid of memoir and advice. Tessa is articulate and clear about what chronic illness patients go through. It also contains a wealth of information that can be useful to someone newly diagnosed and even to some who have been ill for years (like myself). It's very graphic and very honest, and I think every Spoonie can relate in some way to this book, whether you suffer from IBD or other types of painful invisible illnesses. While I did love it and found it informative and relatable, I did find myself skimming through some of the repetitive and preachy parts. Overall, I definitely recommend :)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma, Chronic illness, Sexual assault, and Alcoholism

lizmart88's review

emotional informative fast-paced

2.5

As someone who has a chronic illness, I was very interested in this memoir. However, I didn't connect with it as much as I thought I would. The writing is clear and the narrative moves briskly. The author is a journalist by trade. I found the book to be a little less in depth on analysis that I enjoyed. I found much of the advice to feel surface level. Perhaps that reflects that i've read a lot about chronic illness and wasn't the right target. I was a bit disappointed that she only talks about western medicine with no acknowledgement that there are schools of medicine outside of these systems. While she connects her disease with stress, I also found it not to make the outright connection that many folks with autoimmune disorders have trauma. So all in all, not bad but not one I'd wholeheartedly recommend.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness

pulpandprose's review

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcoholism, Domestic abuse, Chronic illness, Addiction, and Death of parent

katrinarose's review

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

Part memoir, part self-help, part political/sociological analysis, this was a wonderfully realistic yet hopeful book. As someone who has her same diagnosis (but has not gone through the level of severity she has) I empathized with her harrowing medical trauma. Her writing style kept me hooked. I imagine the self-help aspects to be invaluable for those with severe chronic illness and are written with such tenderness. She also rounds the book out with many statistics and research articles both to infuriate the reader about the state of healthcare in America but also act as a call to action. Since I am able to forget about my diagnosis 90% of the time, I don’t feel I am the exact target audience, however I loved it and would recommend to anyone chronically ill, anyone who has a chronically ill loved one, or anyone interested in the topic of healthcare in America.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Excrement, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Sexual assault, Violence, Addiction, Grief, Drug use, Drug abuse, Blood, Vomit, Alcoholism, and Toxic relationship

bookishpip's review

challenging emotional informative inspiring sad slow-paced

4.0

I was really excited to read this book - I’d never heard of any memoirs that detail life with IBD, a condition that I have and have struggled with deeply in the past few months. Being mid-flare up and being off work for a few months with IBD, I couldn’t think of a more perfect time to read this.

I expected that the book would resonate, but I didn’t anticipate how much. There were so many nuances and intimacies of my own life that paralleled in ways that I didn’t expect - for example, basing my identity around her career, being profoundly impacted by the loss of her father, and the daily mental hurdles that accompany the physical ones. As a result, this book has had a profound impact on me. 

The reason I’ve given this 4* rather than 5, is because I feel that, at the start especially, the book oscillated dramatically between being a memoir, a self-help guide, and an essay critiquing the American healthcare system, which made it harder to follow. Also, large sections of this book are very specific to experiences within the US. This in itself isn’t a bad thing - the author does a great job of reminding the reader that her experiences are rooted within just that, HER experiences as a white, thin, cisgender woman living in America. But it did mean that, as someone not living in the US, large sections devoted to teaching the reader about how to apply for insurance didn’t apply. (But I’ve never been more thankful to have the NHS!)

Overall, I’d love for everyone to read this. This book was validating in so many ways to me as a chronically unwell person, and I think healthy folks could learn a lot about our experiences in these pages.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Ableism, and Chronic illness

Moderate: Drug abuse and Alcoholism