Julie Rehmeyer

An illness memoir. The author suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS/ME) a poorly understood disorder, which was at some point considered psychosomatic.

Her narrative acquires strength because of her scientific background and constant skepticism even against treatment regimes that seem to work for her. I sympathized with her quest for improving her health and her optimism. I also envied her the help and support she received from many friends, and even from her ex husband and his family. She has expressed gratitude in many places in the book, and I think she knows how fortunate she is in her misfortune.

Some reader criticized the unorthodox treatment methods she chose to follow. But if you read the complete book you understand that she is telling her story. Many times in the book she admits that if these methods worked for her, she has no explanation why they did, and she cannot be sure whether they would work for other people. Her valid excuse is that when science does not understand the mechanics and process of the illness, patients are left to experiment and try even psychotherapy and mystic methods. If they work then well and good, they do not question why. She still concludes that there is no substitute for valid scientific research that would eventually lead to effective treatment, rather than mystical and experimental methods that can sometimes work on individual levels.… (meer)

I really liked this book. It was like returning to the classroom for medical anthropology lectures. In this book the author recounts how she dealt with chronic fatigue syndrome, a disorder that is like the biomedical scarlet letter because it is not well understood. I felt like this book taught me something I was resistant to in that lecture class, the idea that biomedical isn't always the best path. Don't get me wrong, it usually is, but science as an institution isn't immune to politics, cultural stigma, and people with ulterior motives sabotaging the process of science. This book seems to reveal one of those places where this has happened.(If there is one thing that bothers me to no end, it is when someone writes a study to say that they discovered results that they did not have proper evidence for.) The author's position as a journalist allowed her to research her condition and many of the possibilities about it. I may have also liked the book because the author touched me as an individual. I found her skepticism and the fact that she was raised by a Christian scientist familiar, like she spoke my language. I am also really impressed with how she dealt with the efficacy of non-conventional treatments, and possible reasons why they worked. It is exactly this kind of mind that I'd like to see routing out cultural errors in the biomedical system. Finally, her spirituality and epiphanies throughout were helpful to me in another way. I have felt similar moments of clarity. Since coming out as an atheist I have been leery of them, yet I continue to have them, and her integration of this different method of thinking into her skepticism helped heal the part of me that worries that my spiritual moments might be leading me back into the delusion I used to live in. All-in-all, I think that this is an excellent book. I would recommend it most to skeptically inclined medical anthropology students, or sociology students studying the social dimensions of science/medicine.… (meer)

Julie Rehmeyer is a science writer and a former math teacher who counts herself among those committed to proven science. When she finds herself becoming mysteriously ill, she discovers that modern medicine and research science have little to offer her. Rehmeyer becomes almost completely bedridden. Doctors think she might have chronic fatigue syndrome, though the condition is barely researched, and there are no remedies. Entirely out of options, Rehmeyer begins exploring alternative options, including consultations with a guy who goes by "Timmy the Wood Elf."

The book follows several narrative arcs. One, of course, is the saga of Rehmeyer's health, waiting to see if she ever gets better. Another is discussion of research agendas and funding. There is an antagonistic relationship between chronic fatigue patients and certain sectors of the scientific community, and Rehmeyer is interested to find out why this antagonism developed. Plenty of scientists maintain that fatigue disorders are psychosomatic, and patients are angry that researchers refuse to take their symptoms seriously. The third arc follows the saga of Rehmeyer's family. When she gets sick Rehmeyer finds herself quite alone in the world. She never knew her father, her mother died in Rehmeyer's late teens. The author was estranged from her siblings, whose mentally unstable mother had sent them away, allowing only Julie to remain. Throughout her life Rehmeyer bore the brunt of her mother's mental illness. As an adult, Rehmeyer's marriage breaks up, and she finds herself facing an uncertain future alone. This leads her to take stock of her family's history.

This is a dense read. It is not a story of a conversion narrative in which someone who believes in science suddenly "wakes up" and discovers natural remedies. This book is full of scientific information, and Rehmeyer emerges at the end just as committed to finding scientific understanding for her problems. It takes a bit of time to get through this book, but it is also compelling, interesting, and well-written.… (meer)