Take a photo of a barcode or cover
challenging
informative
reflective
I had to order this book online because it’s apparently not available in-store anywhere. I wanted to read it so that I could learn about the struggles Kamen went through to cure her headache. Though her experience isn’t the same thing that I have been going through, I thought it could lend some guidance, or at least some insight into the realms of headaches. Starting off, I was pretty astonished to find that my experience with the neurologist seemed to mirror Kamen’s pretty significantly. We had been treated very similarly, and put on several the same drugs in the beginning (and her story started almost 20 years ago). What this made me realize more than anything was that my neurologist seemed to very much be focusing on my intermittent head pain instead of my symptoms at large. It was a disappointing, although not really very surprising, revelation. As I read further into this book, I really began to feel frustrated for and with Kamen, as her problems never seemed to get better, and her quest for resolve never seemed to end. In the end, I am left feeling two things: slightly disheartened that my chronic problems may never be solved, and grateful that I am not suffering what poor Paula Kamen has been dealing with for close to 20 years.
I thought that her combination of personal memoir, with her insightful and witty perspective on both modern medicine and alternative medicine made for a really understandable and interesting book to read. Much of what she has to say resonated with things I had learned when I took my anthropology of reproduction class. The other thing I gained from her book is a greater understanding of what life with a chronic debilitating medical condition is like. Glad to have read this.
I really enjoyed this memoir - a little bit of a slower read. The book is a memoir written by a journalist, Paula Kamen, who one day gets a headache. And it stays. For at least 15 years and counting. This is her chronicle of searching for a cure to her pain, and then her story of learning to accept that the pain may continue to be a constant. Along the way she delves into all sorts of research on Chronic Daily Headache, tries all sorts of conventional and non-conventional remedies, and begins interviewing other "Tired Girls" like herself. I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in chronic illness, chronic pain, migraines, feminist studies, public health or biography and memoir. For those with chronic pain of their own - this lady "gets it".