subtitled Personal Histories of Chronic Pain and Bad Medicine.
After a lifetime of anxiety and self-medication, Erin Williams realized that the American health system had failed her. At best, it focused on symptoms instead of attempting to treat her as an entire person, leaving her to suffer with chronic pain and, finally, to search for answers as to not only how to feel better physically but how to cope with the mental, emotional and spiritual despair that she was constantly told were merely aftereffects of her physical disease. If they were considered at all a source or contributor to her maladies, it was clearly because she was mistaken or, worse, making these symptoms up. If they couldn’t see the problem, the medical system insisted, then the problem couldn’t possibly be real.
One thing before I continue: while the back cover makes it very clear that this is an American healthcare issue, the contents do not. I understand why: the point of the author constantly saying “our” without specifying who “we” is makes the contents feel more immediately relevant to the reader. But anyone with experience of medicine in foreign countries — or at least the countries with decent medical systems like Malaysia, tho anywhere else feels truly exemplary compared to the hellscape that is American medicine with its demon master of for-profit health insurance — will feel immediately how alien and awful the treatment depicted here is. As someone who’s experienced both systems, I can attest to both the veracity of Ms Williams’ depiction, as well as the uniquely frustrating misery of being unable to access life-saving care because of paperwork and price-gouging when other countries somehow manage it just fine!