A review by doc_erinnicole
The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness by Meghan O'Rourke

emotional informative medium-paced

4.0

The mix of memoir and research worked really well here.  I could tell O'Rourke was a poet based on her use of language and metaphor throughout the text.  I appreciated her deep dive into our tendency towards seeing chronic illness as a moralistic stain and the false notion that if we just lived our lives right, CI is something we can control and eradicate.  I also really connected to her discussion on how we don't really have the words to describe so much of CI (ex. there's many different types of fatigue-- not all fatigue is because of a lack of sleep-- and each type can feel so different in the body but it's hard to describe from the outside).  It's frustrating that when doctor's can't seem to figure out what's going on they simply blame it on the patient and assume it's psychosomatic.  Doctors are not gods, even if they think so.  I'm really curious how research and funding will develop as more and more people have long covid and taken out of the workforce.