

It’s a diagnosis that itself carries significant stigma and unresolved issues it is not widely understood or taken seriously in many medical circles, leaving Khakpour to justify her illness again and again with each hospitalization.īut Lyme is one facet of this complex story of illness. The list of afflictions is long and the list of answers to her numerous health concerns short after years of insomnia, drug dependency, fainting, issues eating, neuropathy, and other physical and mental symptoms, she was diagnosed with Lyme Disease.


Rather than success, here we see the author defined by sickness as she grapples with mysterious symptoms that disrupt her life so fully that even moments that should be celebratory become riddled with anxiety and doctor visits. Although known in literary circles as a gifted and successful writer with a string of impressive accolades, Khakpour shows a very different side of her experiences. In her new memoir, author Porochista Khakpour delves into her own history of illness and addiction to craft a harrowing tale of sickness in all its forms and an unflinching look at health care in the United States. A story about survival, pain, and transformation, Sick is a candid, illuminating narrative of hope and uncertainty, boldly examining the deep impact of illness on one woman's life.New York. With candor and grace, she examines her subsequent struggles with mental illness, her addiction to the benzodiazepines prescribed by her psychiatrists, and her ever-deteriorating physical health. Divided by settings, Khakpour guides the reader through her illness by way of the locations that changed her course-New York, LA, New Mexico, and Germany-as she meditates on both the physical and psychological impacts of uncertainty, and the eventual challenge of accepting the diagnosis she had searched for over the course of her adult life. Sick is Khakpour's arduous, emotional journey-as a woman, a writer, and a lifelong sufferer of undiagnosed health problems-through the chronic illness that perpetually left her a victim of anxiety, living a life stymied by an unknown condition. All of her trips to the ER and her daily anguish, pain, and lethargy only ever resulted in one question: How could any one person be this sick? Several drug addictions, three major hospitalizations, and over $100,000 later, she finally had a diagnosis: late-stage Lyme disease. For most of that time, she didn't know why. For as long as writer Porochista Khakpour can remember, she has been sick. "In the tradition of Brain on Fire and Darkness Visible, an honest, beautifully rendered memoir of chronic illness, misdiagnosis, addiction, and the myth of full recovery that details author Porochista Khakpour's struggles with late-stage Lyme disease.
