Reading this book made me wonder if I was being stalked; for over 30 years I experienced the exact same pain and frustration for the same medical issues as the author. Abby does a great job of explaining the years women deal with not being heard by doctors as we continue to suffer and question our own strength. How many times do we have to scream, "I'm not crazy! This pain is real!" before we are taken seriously and get some relief? I wish this book was a must read for doctors, but sadly, I suspect only women who have or had endometriosis will pick it up. Thank you, Abby, for sharing your experience, and for giving a voice to those of us who suffered in silence.

Norman details her life story, her medical crisis and her attempts to understand and handle it better: the grueling symptoms of endometriosis, the lack of proper care and cure, the fixation with 'being one's own doctor', the paranoia at the unknown and the (seemingly bizarre and desperately morbid) attempts to 'get to know the uterus' (attending cadaver openings!) and trying to find a doctor who'd take her seriously.

Though many may not get the extreme forms of pain and lackadaisical doctors, I think we can all relate to the fact that when you are ill, know you are ill, and medicines are not working, and doctors are not paying attention the way you want them to, then you go off on a road of understanding your own body, whether the tendency to have cysts is due to inflammation, or autoimmune disorder or something else, you get blood tests of anything and everything (hormones, thyroid, vitamins), ultrasounds of organs/ areas, read books and net researches, that can show what's wrong with you so that the doctor believes you!

I do not agree with Norman's peculiar obsession with endometriosis - but it is incredibly shocking that she could not find a single doctor who examined her properly as per her recurring debilitating symptoms, a drug / pool of drugs that could handle her horrible symptoms better and increase her quality of life without crippling her with a constant sense of fear and disappointment - and she is presenting her authentic journey and there's a lesson in it for all of us, women and practitioners.

It's a very important book, at the end of it, you will feel as exhausted as Norman is by the cycle of futility - trying to make people believe she is not a hypochondriac, not suffering from a neurological disease, not uninterested in sex, not being difficult, constant intrusive examinations - a doctor at the end of the book even says to her 'let me know what's wrong with you, when you find out' (!) So .there it is - Norman still doesn't know what is the cause of the pain and how to fix it. She's just living with it.

I'm going to be honest and say that I was expecting more from this. I thought it would be more about Norman's health struggles and fights with her doctors. Instead, the constant focus on Norman's horrific childhood were a distraction from that. While her background was important to the story, it felt like there was more focus on it than necessary, turning it into a general memoir by Norman, rather than a medical-focused one. I think the book would have been better served by shortening the stories of Norman's childhood into one chapter with occasional brief anecdotes, and then using more time to focus on her work with other women. But despite these issues I will still happily recommend this to people because the medical aspects are so important and should be shared.