O'Rourke is a poet whose work I love, and she brings her felicity with words to prose here, elucidating the experience of being ill as few other authors have done.
She herself has what could be Lyme disease likely along with other issues but the story she tells is one which I suspect almost anyone who has any form of disability, chronic illness or a condition which doctors find hard to diagnose, to fix, and to bill would recognise. It is also a story which is becoming increasingly common particularly with so many people having developed long CoVID in recent years.
Whether or not one has chronic illness or a disability or some other health issue which impacts one's quality of life, reading the book seems well worth the time it takes, perhaps particularly if one doesn't. It is incredibly hard to explain what chronic health issues are like to those who have no understanding of how difficult each day can be, and this book goes some way towards bridging the communication gap, I think. And that's important not only at home but also in work contexts where one may have to structure how one approaches work around the unavoidable demands of chronic health issues, which are often invisible.
(Another helpful read is the spoon theory which I remember sending friends years ago when I ran out of words. It's accessible here as a 3-page pdf: https://lnkd.in/d3V9Sb-J)