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danielnski's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
fast-paced
5.0
Thought-provoking and heartbreaking.
liralen's review
5.0
Easily one of the best blog-to-book memoirs I've read, with a twist: Stewart had been diagnosed with end-stage (terminal) renal disease when she started her blog, and the book was published posthumously. It adds up to one of the few eating-disorder stories I haven't seen before. Stewart's ESRD was related to her eating disorder, and she was both looking back on decades of illness and looking ahead to a certain death—not if you don't make changes, you might die but this is it.
Stewart opted out of dialysis despite the fact that dialysis might have kept her alive (and presumably in a great deal less pain) considerably longer: it was not that she did not want to live, but the disordered part of her brain couldn't let her make the food-related changes dialysis would entail. Recovery wasn't really an option. But she didn't go in blindly. It's frustrating, yes. I 'know better', so to speak, and I still want to say 'but maybe this time...!' It's also poignant and just...entirely sad.
The book isn't really about that, though. Some of it is about the past, though, but more of it is about the day-to-day reality of, well, a drawn-out death—emotional things and a whole host of practical ones: having to sell the house and move somewhere smaller, and trying to manage well-intentioned friends, and a basic triage of activities when energy starts flagging.
Loved this for bringing something new to the table and doing so in such a thoughtful, mindful manner. Just...too bad it's under such circumstances.
Stewart opted out of dialysis despite the fact that dialysis might have kept her alive (and presumably in a great deal less pain) considerably longer: it was not that she did not want to live, but the disordered part of her brain couldn't let her make the food-related changes dialysis would entail. Recovery wasn't really an option. But she didn't go in blindly. It's frustrating, yes. I 'know better', so to speak, and I still want to say 'but maybe this time...!' It's also poignant and just...entirely sad.
The book isn't really about that, though. Some of it is about the past, though, but more of it is about the day-to-day reality of, well, a drawn-out death—emotional things and a whole host of practical ones: having to sell the house and move somewhere smaller, and trying to manage well-intentioned friends, and a basic triage of activities when energy starts flagging.
Loved this for bringing something new to the table and doing so in such a thoughtful, mindful manner. Just...too bad it's under such circumstances.
mgierosky's review
4.0
More about the reality of dying as opposed to her eating disorder, not what I expected, but still good!
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