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A review by anathema_thorn
What Doesn't Kill You: A Life with Chronic Illness - Lessons from a Body in Revolt by Tessa Miller
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.25
This was part memoir, part white lady telling the reader what to do. I wish it was much more of the former and none of the latter, but the author thought it was more worth the space to provide advice for people beginning their chronic illness journey than to offer a more complete version of her own story.
The parts of her chronic illness story she includes are compelling, like the initial chapters detailing her first hospitalization. They resembled mine so closely that I was hooked, only to be disappointed later on. She introduces important information about Crohn's disease with an unpredictable cadence throughout the book, in a way that tbh I think would make it difficult for someone new to learning about Crohn's to grasp what the disease entails. For crying out loud, it took her until at least halfway through the book to bring up immunosuppressant medication! There aren't a lot of good IBD-centric memoirs out there, and she clearly has the capacity to write something informative, but she didn't decide to make a more comprehensive memoir that makes Crohn's more understandable. Sigh.
While the advice, frankly, is often good, the language it is couched in is quite prescriptive and sometimes is condescending...maybe it strikes me that way because I'm already well acquainted with being chronically ill and someone who is newer in the journey might see it another way, though.
Getting more into the "white lady" part of it. From the writing style it is clear the author has a journalism background. While she acknowledges her privilege in a pretty standard way, it rings pretty hollow, considering how she goes onto casually drop the names of the publications she works for, the benefits she has, and vaguely alludes to how much her monthly salary is. The way she mentions how certain health outcomes affect people of different races or other demographics different from her own sounds like she was checking off a box rather than compassionately thinking about how chronic illness affects these communities. Also...through all of this she used the word "minorities"...c'mon, gurl, it's the 2020s. With all that in mind, her advice about how to choose doctors, among other things, sounds condescending, because while most people DO deserve much more considerate doctors and more thoughtful care, most people can't be choosy and frankly are lucky if they can even see a specialist regularly (obviously I wish that was different).
But maybe she realized a chronological telling of her life wouldn't have been as compelling as a combination of advice and memoir. Idk. Ultimately it's a really personal choice to even write a memoir, but for me I thought this story would have been more impactful if told very differently.
The parts of her chronic illness story she includes are compelling, like the initial chapters detailing her first hospitalization. They resembled mine so closely that I was hooked, only to be disappointed later on. She introduces important information about Crohn's disease with an unpredictable cadence throughout the book, in a way that tbh I think would make it difficult for someone new to learning about Crohn's to grasp what the disease entails. For crying out loud, it took her until at least halfway through the book to bring up immunosuppressant medication! There aren't a lot of good IBD-centric memoirs out there, and she clearly has the capacity to write something informative, but she didn't decide to make a more comprehensive memoir that makes Crohn's more understandable. Sigh.
While the advice, frankly, is often good, the language it is couched in is quite prescriptive and sometimes is condescending...maybe it strikes me that way because I'm already well acquainted with being chronically ill and someone who is newer in the journey might see it another way, though.
Getting more into the "white lady" part of it. From the writing style it is clear the author has a journalism background. While she acknowledges her privilege in a pretty standard way, it rings pretty hollow, considering how she goes onto casually drop the names of the publications she works for, the benefits she has, and vaguely alludes to how much her monthly salary is. The way she mentions how certain health outcomes affect people of different races or other demographics different from her own sounds like she was checking off a box rather than compassionately thinking about how chronic illness affects these communities. Also...through all of this she used the word "minorities"...c'mon, gurl, it's the 2020s. With all that in mind, her advice about how to choose doctors, among other things, sounds condescending, because while most people DO deserve much more considerate doctors and more thoughtful care, most people can't be choosy and frankly are lucky if they can even see a specialist regularly (obviously I wish that was different).
But maybe she realized a chronological telling of her life wouldn't have been as compelling as a combination of advice and memoir. Idk. Ultimately it's a really personal choice to even write a memoir, but for me I thought this story would have been more impactful if told very differently.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness, Toxic relationship, Blood, Excrement, Medical content, and Medical trauma
Moderate: Addiction, Mental illness, and Vomit