The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness

A Memoir

By: Sarah Ramey

Narrated by: Eileen Stevens, Sarah Ramey

"A best memoir of 2020" —BookPage

The darkly funny memoir of Sarah Ramey’s years-long battle with a mysterious illness that doctors thought was all in her head—but wasn’t. A revelation and an inspiration for millions of women whose legitimate health complaints are ignored.

In her harrowing, defiant, and unforgettable memoir, Sarah Ramey recounts the decade-long saga of how a seemingly minor illness in her senior year of college turned into a prolonged and elusive condition that destroyed her health but that doctors couldn't diagnose or treat. Worse, as they failed to cure her, they hinted that her devastating symptoms were psychological.
The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a memoir with a mission: to help the millions of (mostly) women who suffer from unnamed or misunderstood conditions--autoimmune illnesses, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic Lyme disease, chronic pain, and many more. Ramey's pursuit of a diagnosis and cure for her own mysterious illness becomes a page-turning medical mystery that reveals a new understanding of today's chronic illnesses as ecological in nature, driven by modern changes to the basic foundations of health, from the quality of our sleep, diet, and social connections to the state of our microbiomes. Her book will open eyes, change lives, and, ultimately, change medicine.

Necessary

Validating read! I feel seen and I’m so grateful, though I hate what Sarah went through.

Enlightening

Sad, horrible story to have gone through such things. This is exactly what I needed to hear. No more traditional doctors, functional medicine only!

Don’t miss this

Impeccably researched and deeply moving, I’ve bought this book for a dozen people already. May you find it as important as I did.

I found my tribe

It’s so refreshing to know I’m not alone in my struggles with health. I kept saying, “Yes! Yes! That’s me!” throughout the whole book. I am a WOMI!

The trials and tribulations of living with chronic illness as a woman.

I enjoyed this book and I felt seen within the context of complex autoimmune maladies that are often eschewed by the myriad of providers I’ve seen. My issue with the audible version was the mispronunciation of many of the medicines and nomenclature. I’m shocked no one on the production/editing side noticed. It’s Diflucan not Diflucon, ketamine is pronounced keht-amine, not keetamine, it’s not yang with a hard a but yawng. Otherwise, if you’re someone who has had mystery illnesses I’m guessing you will feel validated by hearing Ms Ramey’s story.