The Lady’s Handbook For Her Mysterious Illness
A Memoir
by Sarah Ramey
Summary
The Lady’s Handbook For Her Mysterious Illness is a story of one woman’s horrific journey through the American health care system. Presenting with symptoms that did not lend themselves to an easy diagnosis or treatment with the go-to prescription drugs, she was passed from specialist to specialist. Many of these doctors either performed the incorrect medical procedures on her, or performed medical procedures on her incorrectly. She was soon being treated for anxiety and depression and beginning to believe her doctors’ insinuation that she was mentally unstable, desiring to remain sick, or choosing not to take the hard journey toward healing because of personal weakness.
At the halfway point in the book, after one final, atrocious, erroneous medical procedure, I felt that I couldn’t read any more. It happened at the very same moment that the author wrote the following:
“So, reader. I admit I feel a little bad for you…
I hope you are tired of hearing these violating, nauseating, nightmare stories, over and over again.
I certainly am, and I am also tired of having to tell them.
And tired of having to live them.
And tired of having to relive them.
And so, I come to you with good news.
This is the last time I am ever going to tell you a story like this.”
And then, somehow, the story transitions into one of hope. The author remains sick, but steadily improving. As she writes about the importance of the woman who rises up from the ashes, reborn as a healer. As someone willing to speak up against the menacing danger in lives that are being overwhelmed by the stressors of modern life and the chronic illnesses that come as a warning that the system is failing.
Author’s Website
The Lady’s Handbook For Her Mysterious Illness - Book by Sarah Ramey
Favorite Quotes
“Someone on this planet has to stay sensitive to the environment, to our cultural decisions, and to our mistakes. Someone has to be the alarm system for the larger human organism. Someone has to be able to feel when something is wrong, if we make the mistake of thinking only logic and science will tell us what is right and what is wrong.
“For problems that are systemic, what is required is to walk right into the darkness, right down to the roots, to look around without being undone by fears and without killing everything off, and instead slowly bringing what is true—even if it’s ugly—back up and into the light.”
“Almost all positive change starts with a negative no.”
“And this is the most important thing to understand when invoking the holy No. Generally, it will mean being unliked, unpleasant, displeasing, aggravating, soft, unserious, or annoying—perceived by others as difficult, bad, deviant, or, of course, crazy.”
“We’re all in the same off-course boat together—eating, thinking, and doing what everyone eats, thinks, and does. These chronic illnesses, these communications from the body—they are not here to shame us. They are asking us to listen compassionately, slowly, lovingly—listen so that we might change ourselves, which is the slow but sure way we can help change our community, which is the slow but sure way we can start to transform the rather grim situation we have unwittingly created. And when we start to look at it this way—not symptoms as aggressors, but symptoms as communication—not underworld as evil, but underworld as transformer—not change as a radical overthrow, but change as love—then we begin to see that women and the increasingly sick bodies we inhabit are all encoded with the same message…”
“We need the people who have been forced to grow down.”
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