Took me way too long to read this, but as someone with autoimmune disease and chronic illness, the content really appealed to me. What the author does is describe her experience of symptom onset, the process to get diagnosed (and mis-diagnosed), the trauma of poor medical treatment, and her perspective on illness and healing in general.

Towards the end I found that she really encourages readers to explore functional medicine, which I wholly agree with. I see there’s some controversy over some of the author’s commentary but this is her experience and no one should disqualify it.

I found many of the things she mentioned as very relatable and in some ways, upsetting. The truths of the chronically ill are deeply personal yet equally shared. To be healthy and become disabled is something we only understand having gone through it… yet each of our experiences are so unique. I appreciate the author sharing her story and I’m glad to have had the opportunity to read it.

Thank you so much to @doubledaybooks @netgalley and @prhaudio for a complimentary e-galley and ALC in exchange for an honest review.

loved being taken through this journey, which is hard to say given how brutal dealing with chronic & autoimmune ilnesses can be. ramey's style and clear tone of voice made that possible

*I received this book as a free eARC through NetGalley*

I wanted to love this book. I did. I believe in invisible illnesses and the unequal treatment of women in healthcare, especially Black women. Further I have heavily studied the racist history of gynecology and the concepts of male-driven data and research dominating medicine. None of these topics come up in the book.

I found this book unbearable — the privilege this author has and utilizes throughout her story is immense and she never once reckons with it. She is the daughter of two wealthy doctors, who multiple times throughout even just the portion of what I was able to read, travel across the country or pay for her to travel across the country to access care. This is not something that is possible for all Women with Mysterious Illnesses, or WOMI as the author dubs them. Without accounting for how class and wealth were able to influence the amount of treatment she receives, the author comes off as unbearably pretentious and whiny. Also, not once in this book does the concepts of medicare for all or free healthcare come into the text. Mind boggling.

DNF at 26%

I finished this book several months ago and had a review written on one of my blogs that I was waiting to publish near to the publication date. Then I got waylaid by my own viral illness in the spring and the review sat in the drafts as I worked on recovery and read other books. When I first read it, I was really wrapped up in it and enjoyed it. While I don't agree with all of the conclusions Ramey comes to in terms of healing, those are mostly on the nutrition front and only in some ways. (I healed my own mysterious and debilitating illnesses years ago and did so with dietary changes that she says won't work -- she went mostly paleo in her healing with foods like bone broth and I went vegan, organic and plant-based. She says things like you can't eat beans when you're recovering, while I found that foods like these were instrumental in my healing and in my continuing health. That said, I'm a big believer in lots of roads leading to Rome.)

I was reminded of the book when I saw a Goodreads friend's scathing review of it, and then saw that another friend also had a lot of criticisms. Reading through the negative reviews on the book, I can see their points. That said, I did like the book a lot and didn't mind the sparse writing style or some of the other issues they had. I felt for all she went through at the hands of truly terrible doctors. While I agree with some of their points against Ramey, this is ultimately her book and her story. She doesn't have to write about men's autoimmune struggles or those of others. And yes, it is gruesome in details about all that she went through, but I don't know how she could tell the story properly without sharing it. I also have no qualms with her recommendations for functional doctors. I tend to admire the way they look at the whole picture instead of one part.

All in all, I found this to be a captivating read with mostly very good advice. Her dietary advice is one small part of what she recommends (and I fundamentally agree with much of that advice too), and I found myself nodding my head again and again with her other recommendations. And yes, she comes from a place of privilege and she sometimes goes into feminist, esoteric segues. Most of it is just in one part of the book and I just took what worked for me and left the rest. I still recommend it, but now realize that it's likely to be a book that people either really like or really dislike, and there are valid reasons for either.

I read a digital ARC of this book for review.

Sarah Ramey struggled for decades with her health. Mysterious ailments and alternative medicine, she tried it all and shares her knowledge with us. She opens our eyes to the fact that we are not struggling alone with health issues our doctors may not even recognize as real. Everywoman should read this book twice and then being her own research. I love it.

This book FASCINATED me. Once you get beyond the graphic medical nature of this memoir, you are sucked down into the rabbit hole of this medical mystery swathed in feminist theory.

The author has incredibly painful medical conditions that drive her to try any and all procedures, remedies, experimental ideas, and more doctor appointments than a healthy person could fathom.

I have a friend who is a WOMI and I read with our conversations as a foundation for my knowledge in this arena. I, myself, have not experienced any of these symptoms and I can't imagine the pain and the frustration.

After the author's trip to the Mayo Clinic, my interest waned and I found myself skimming for the rest of the book. The book turned too long for me as she went down a more sociological exploration with a feminist voice that was not as interesting to me.

Overall, this was a unique memoir a very interesting look at conditions that exists amongst a group of women that are often dismissed and attributed to emotional and mental issues.

3.5 stars

#NetGalley #TheLady'sHandbookforHerMysteriousIllness

✨A memoir • a saga • a mission to help✨

It’s been a month since I read The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness (#netgalley #gifted), but I’m still exhausted remembering Sarah Ramey’s story. You see, Sarah is a WOMI — a woman with a mysterious illness. No, that’s not the start of a Dateline episode in which a crack team of doctors work round the clock, develop a magical cure and share inspirational messages as the credits roll. Sarah is a WOMI, she’s not alone, and there is no cure to find.

Not only does this memoir recount Sarah’s excruciating timeline of misdiagnoses, trial and error procedures, and life with debilitating chronic illness. It also follows Sarah’s hunt for answers not only for herself but for the millions of people like her. She knows what it’s like to be dismissed and only offered an antidepressant. She knows what it’s like to be ignored by doctors who cry hypochondriac. So she offers this story as a lifeline - a sign of solidarity with the masses like her.

More than once did I think I was listening to her rock bottom before something even worse happened. I felt her frustration like it was mine. But it’s not a story without hope either. No, she’s not “cured.” That’s not how chronic illness works. But through everything, the author found reason to keep going in a way that was infectious.

I’ll admit the book started to lose me personally when it sways into the prescriptive, when Ramey offers advice/answers for various WOMI problems. I do know why she went that route, considering how few answers standard medicine offers for people desperate for help. But it does rub me the wrong way to offer help without guarantees. Saying that comes from a place of great privilege of course, me being a WOMI Level 1 on most days, and only a Level 3 on bad. I haven’t been pushed to my absolute limits trying to find something that will make life livable. It’s not my place to judge anyone’s personal health decisions, I just hope they take any advice with just as many grains of salt as I do.
Maybe one day we’ll actually get legitimate research funding/attention for these afflictions so it’s less of a guessing game.

This book sounded so fascinating but I got so distracted by

The writing style

Which was there for a reason

I'm sure

But I found it so odd

As I did the repetition

And repetition

And repetition

Are women routinely ignored by doctors? Absolutely. Should doctors be given more education and training to listen? To empathize? To think about the body as a whole? Yes. Absolutely yes.

This book.

Means well.

But is not as engaging as it thinks it is.

As a woman with IBS and RA, I've experienced my concerns being brushed off by physicians. Working as a nurse practitioner, I know a little bit about medicine but tend to lose my objectivity when it comes to my own issues and dealing with medical providers. I've never been told that my problems are 'in my head' but I've certainly been dismissed. Changing my diet? Taking supplements? I was once told that probiotics are akin to pixie dust.

So I was really intrigued by Sarah Ramey's story. And what a story it is. The child of 2 physicians, she was raised to trust in traditional medicine and to respect physicians. When traditional medicine failed her, she sought answers from other physicians. I was horrified to read some of the medical procedures she endured and the patronizing demeanor of some of the physicians she met. I believe it all because I've seen it in my years as a nurse. Having a disease with vague symptoms that has no pharmacological treatment made her targeted as a drug seeker at worst and a malingerer at best. This is a difficult story to read but it should be a cautionary tale for patients and medical providers to listen to the patient with empathy. There's so much good advice in here regarding diet and supplements as well as advocating for yourself. No one, and I mean no one should have to go through what Sarah has gone through.

My only complaint about this book is that I felt there were parts of her story that didn't provide value--there was a large narrative on heroines and while I get that this was part of her journey, I skimmed past it. Chalk it up to me looking more at the disease and management, but it just felt superfluous. And yes, I do believe that women are quite often dismissed in medicine, something that needs to change. Interestingly, I've had more empathy from some of the male physicians I've seen than women!

In spite of that, if you are a WOMI (woman of mysterious illness), you need to read this book, if for nothing else but the empowerment you will feel when you finish.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for supplying me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review. In the early pages of The Lady's Handbook for Her mysterious illness, Ramey recalls how a normal twenty-something life was upended by a UTI from hell--one that nearly killed her and led to six months of IV antibiotics. This UTI is the trigger for Ramey's fall "down the rabbit hole" from healthy woman to full-blown medical mystery. I found Ramey's telling of her medical struggles and the resulting medical sexism she encountered from doctors--both well-meaning and downright reprehensible--to be extremely compelling. Throughout, Ramey struggles to carve out a resemblance of a happy life--playing music, dating, and working for Barrack Obama--amid a debilitating laundry list of symptoms few belief and none can diagnose. During this ten year battle for wellness, Ramey yo-yos from near-recovery to near-death countless times. Finally, she reaches a breaking point and decides to take healing into her own hands, and what she learns through this process is the backbone of this book.

Any compassionate person will find this book, on one hand, hard to endure because of the pain and suffering Ramey goes through. Even at the end, there's no perfect happy ending, but of course that's the point. For many chronically ill woman, their struggle is lifelong. While I appreciated this honesty from the writer and was thoroughly engrossed by the sections where she details her personal experiences, I could only read this book in short spurts and found myself struggling to finish.

Once Ramey starts talking about her own theories on healing, medical sexism, and functional medicine, it got to be very repetitive for me. She kept hammering the same points again and again, and maybe for someone skeptical of her experience, this would be necessary, but the middle hundred or so pages dragged. And, despite the many pages devoted to detailing her traumatic experiences with doctors, and how the medical establishment is failing patients that are most in need, it seemed to be that Ramey shied away from calling out who profits, literally, from this current system--the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc. I was disappointed that she didn't touch on this more. 2.5 stars.

The writing style makes this story readable and mildly amusing, despite being about the seemingly hopeless medical cases that plague women. The author's voice is distinct and many will be able to relate to her experiences because of the way she was able to communicate her experiences.

Not too long ago, the minute a woman complained about her health, she was diagnosed with hysteria and put into a institution. Now, when we as women complain about her health, doctors often brush us off.

Sarah Ramey writes this dark yet hilarious memoir of her suffering at the hands of a chronic illness that lead to gaslighting from doctors and others. This is a powerful story that is so relevant in today's world.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A highly readable account of the Author's journey through the wastelands of mysterious medical diagnosis. Especially relevant to those with said illness. This gives a personal face to chronic illness that is easy to relate to. Diagnosis and treatments are outlined with the Author's colorful commentary and wit.


Copy provided by the Publisher and NetGalley

I initially wanted to read this book because I am a daughter of a WOMI (woman with a mysterious illness). I was intrigued to hear Sarah's experience, and also see what I could learn from her that may be able to help my mother. I became even more interested as she also discussed the connection with Highly Sensitive People (HSP), as I am an HSP myself, and am mothering one as well.

While it is devastating to read about Sarah's experience - I cannot even imagine the pain she has experienced in her life - it will also make you angry. BUT you should definitely still read this book - even if you do not have a mysterious illness, or a loved one with a mysterious illness. What she talks about as far as the female experience in medicine is a real and important problem that must be addressed. I have seen it in my personal experience. Later in the book, she takes on even bigger topics such as the idea of the masculine and the feminine, the Standard American Diet, and more. These are also very important topics that she covers deftly and with sensitivity. This book has a lot of great things to say, and Sarah covers a serious and sad story with some lightness, and a writing style that pulls you along at a fantastic pace. Highly recommend.

This fascinating play-by-play of one woman's decade-long health struggles reads more like a mystery novel than a nonfiction memoir. I was touched by the richness of detail and experience shared in the book. My only frustration was that I felt it took the author a long time to get where she was going, which was to explain the specific (and controversial) medical field that worked for her. I loved hearing her story and learned a lot from her experience, but I do wish I'd known a bit more about how focused she'd be on functional medicine before I began reading. I found myself skimming quite a bit during the chapters meant to convey all of her research and educate the reader on functional medicine, but I was 1,000% invested in her personal story from beginning to end.

As someone who suffers from fibromyalgia (and suffers from shame of having to admit it) this book spoke to me on a deep level. Her story is horrifying. The pain and abuse she lived with at the hands of her health providers is appalling. The first 50% of the book is a memoir about her life with debilitating pain. Honestly when I got to the halfway point of the book, I was about to abandon it bc I just couldn’t handle reading one more near death setback, but then she changed course and started writing about her experience going into the depths of her personal hell and finding her feminine divinity. It is one of the most beautiful things I have read in a long time. You don’t need to have a mysterious illness to appreciate her discovery. She handles herself beautifully in this book and you truly feel like she is sitting down and having a discussion with you. If you have a mysterious illness and have felt ignored, mocked, belittled, diminished by your health care providers, both traditional and alternative, this book is for you. If you don’t but need some empowerment in your life, this book is for you as well. Thank you #netgalley for an ARC of #theladyshandbookforhermysteriousillness

"BuT. YoU. LoOk. FiNe."

How many different ways have you thought, spoken, or applied these words to someone else? How often have they assaulted your own ears? Tormented you in private? Cropped up again and again throughout your life to spiral you into frustration then into disappointment in seconds?

How many times have you heard them launch from the mouths of the people you love, the strangers you've only just met, the doctors who have no definitive answers, no diagnoses as of yet, or the friends who surely mean well but simply do not comprehend what it means for you to be chronically sick?

As the author points out, and as, I, and many other sufferers of a mysterious illness know, those four little words have the power to aggrieve a person straight through to the soul. They sting a little. Slam like a brick across your chest. Hearing them spoken even in a kindly or a sympathetic fashion sometimes has the capacity to make you feel absolutely wretched inside instead of gratified or uplifted because you can't help but think how at odds those words are with how your body feels and functions seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, minute to minute in the throws of disease that grants you no rest. It's impossible not to be affected by such a harmless pronouncement - wounded even. It can be difficult to accept the sentiment behind them when relentless, often debilitating, flu-minor symptoms are underscored or invalidated by person after person merely because you may have the so-called "appearance" of good health.

"You look great!" they say.

"Too bad I never feel that way," you want to retort but don't.

(Talk about a tough pill to swallow day after day, right? Especially for those of us who are already swallowing prescribed pills and exhaustion all the time as it is.)

The harrowing truth of this book is that disease of the chronic/autoimmune/mysterious variety tends to be invisible, meaning it's often indiscernible to the naked eye as well as opaque to easy diagnosis and simple cure-alls. Ramey makes sure to highlight the brutal reality of what that signifies.

Which - yep, you guessed it - can be uncomfortable to read let alone to imagine experiencing yourself.

I admire the painstaking honesty and comfort she offers to readers in this memoir, though. She doesn't shy away from recounting her own medical horror stories, from detailing her own health epiphanies, from listing alternative remedies/functional medicine programs she's used to try and improve her quality of life. She isn't afraid to address the stigmatization that surrounds women's health, either. The sexism. She also talks about the embedded systemic problem of physicians who constantly throw out pills, procedures, wrong or "psychological" diagnoses without truly listening to their women patients. (Oooh boy, have I been there and done that!) In fact, I think the importance of listening - of really, truly listening to women - was my biggest takeaway.

Something else that was particularly revelatory is how this book underlines the disconnect that exists between how invisibly ill people FEEL all the time and the way others PERCEIVE how they feel based on what they can see or judge with their eyes.

Ramey talks about the chasm that creates. A cleft that tosses sick people on an island adrift, alone, where they're trying to reconcile the two sides of themselves: Inner and Outer. The Outer Self projects a smiling "okayness" to avoid judgment from those who don't understand what they're feeling while the Inner Self swallows, swallows, swallows all the Things She Cannot Say Or Show until she flames out like a meteorite. Collapsing inwardly from the strain of pretending she was "fine" when, in fact, she wasn't fine at all. Not once the the entire time.

As someone who's constantly waging this Inner/Outer battle with invisible illness myself, reading about it was like receiving a shock of affirmation to my conscious mind. It was a "wow, you split like this all the time" realization, for sure, and I appreciated that. I needed it. Commiseration, solidarity, patience, frustration, empathy, whatever you want to call it--I got all that from this and more.

For Ramey, and for other WOMI's like her, navigating ill health is messy, complicated, and ongoing. It is a journey that is equal parts hopeful and disheartening, relentless and abating. Sometimes it's as cruel as it is kind, as dark as it is light, but do you know what? If you open your ears not just your eyes you'll realize why all of this is so important to know.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the ARC!

This memoir occasionally had me wishing it would soon be over, not only for me, but for the author herself, so that she would finally be free from pain. But this is not a happy ending kind of book, and you know that going in. This is a: here is the reality kind of book. It is not lost on me that I found it difficult to endure over the course of several days, but the author lived these infuriating hardships for over a decade.
The structure, while paging through the book, may look like an attempt to make it seem longer than it is, with frequent breaks and short sections, sometimes only a couple of words long, but this is not only strategic, it is wholly necessary. If it were formatted any other way, it would be dense, clinical, overwhelming, and the importance of what she's writing about would be lost. It needs to be digested in small sections.
The author was once told she suffered from a lack of rage. Readers of this account will not. The things women have to do to be taken seriously, to be believed about what they know of their own bodies, their own lived experiences, is astounding and horrifying. "Staying likable" to Dr.'s who have belittle and dismissed her, prescribed her antidepressants for physical symptoms which resulted in serious suicidal inclinations, just so that "this well-respected doctor will continue to provide care on into the future" is absolutely terrifying, as a woman, as a person.
While the middle hundred pages dragged a little for me, I appreciate how thorough the author was with everything she considered, including the lengthy resource list at the back of the book.

This book really resonated with me. Two years ago I developed a mysterious illness that caused me to be in pain whenever I would eat. I've been given a couple of diagnoses that are mentioned in the book (IBS, SIBO), but no one has ever been able to tell my why I got sick or how I can get better. I've seen a lot of doctors, tried a lot medications, and cut out a lot of foods I loved, and all I can say is that two years later more than half the time I'm just very uncomfortable instead of being in constant pain.

Sarah's story felt so much like my story, and her research so much like my research. I've been fortunate to mostly have seen doctors who are compassionate, but I've been told over and over that there's nothing more that can be done to help me.

This book made me feel hopeful that maybe I don't have to stay stuck in this state forever, and seen, which is a really wonderful thing after feeling so isolated and alone for so long. I'd recommend it to anyone else living with a mystery disease.

As someone who lives with chronic pain that has a specific reason, I can only imagine what chronic pain without a diagnosis is like. Sarah Ramey tells the whole truth here, without flinching, and calls every person to really listen to her story. It isn't for the faint of heart but, then again, I suppose that is the point: that not a one of us is faint of heart and we would do well to pay attention to each other. An important, essential book.