Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
(Unsplash/Carolina Heza)

The journey Sarah Ramey relates in The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness has much in common with resurrection narratives: It is only by accepting the darkness she goes through that Ramey can come out on the other side. After having explored and exhausted countless paths to wellness, most of them unsuccessfully, she has a plethora of advice for fellow WOMIs, as she calls them: “Women With Mysterious Illnesses.” Her own research into the chronic illnesses that plague millions of women is astonishing, thorough and revelatory, a valuable resource for WOMIs and those who seek to understand and treat them.

The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illnessby Sarah Ramey

Doubleday

432p $27.95

Ramey’s physical illnesses haunt her for more than a decade as they are ignored, misdiagnosed and minimized by the medical establishment until she discovers something called functional medicine and experiences an epiphany about her body. Her journey is not without its low points: “Reader, it was horrible to still be alive at all.”

Ramey struggles with inept and uncaring doctors, some of whom do more harm than good, including one who causes lasting devastation to her vagina. Eventually Ramey comes to see that the “process of death and renewal is the story of life itself. It’s the story of nature, earth.” Ramey spends most of her time in the Holy Saturday world—before resurrection and after a death of sorts, struggling to find the light—but she finally finds it in embracing the darkness: “No cure, no juggler, no miracle pill, no positive thought will ever be worth more to me than the story of my story, the story of our story, the story of the ancient, holy, and important dark.” She asserts that “a near supernatural ability to rise up from the dead—that is, and has always been, my real superpower. And my dear reader, it’s probably yours too.”

The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a rallying cry to all other women whose illnesses go untreated.

This book is a rallying cry to all other women whose illnesses go untreated but also to the general public on the need to make our medical system more responsive to chronic illness.

Ramey is a crusader for everyone who has been ignored, offering a powerful argument that “my case went unsolved for fourteen years because no one would listen to me and the reason they would not listen to me is because I am a woman.”

This book is a rallying cry to all other women whose illnesses go untreated but also to the general public on the need to make our medical system more responsive to chronic illness. Ramey’s memoir will lift you up by taking you down into the depths of despair that she experienced; you will be as inspired as you are educated about topics such as autoimmune disease, the endocrine system and the ways that society and gender affect them.

We don’t have comments turned on everywhere anymore. We have recently relaunched the commenting experience at America and are aiming for a more focused commenting experience with better moderation by opening comments on a select number of articles each day.

But we still want your feedback. You can join the conversation about this article with us in social media on Twitter or Facebook, or in one of our Facebook discussion groups for various topics.

Or send us feedback on this article with one of the options below:

We welcome and read all letters to the editor but, due to the volume received, cannot guarantee a response.

In order to be considered for publication, letters should be brief (around 200 words or less) and include the author’s name and geographic location. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

We open comments only on select articles so that we can provide a focused and well-moderated discussion on interesting topics. If you think this article provides the opportunity for such a discussion, please let us know what you'd like to talk about, or what interesting question you think readers might want to respond to.

If we decide to open comments on this article, we will email you to let you know.

If you have a message for the author, we will do our best to pass it along. Note that if the article is from a wire service such as Catholic News Service, Religion News Service, or the Associated Press, we will not have direct contact information for the author. We cannot guarantee a response from any author.

We welcome any information that will help us improve the factual accuracy of this piece. Thank you.

Please consult our Contact Us page for other options to reach us.

City and state/province, or if outside Canada or the U.S., city and country. 
When you click submit, this article page will reload. You should see a message at the top of the reloaded page confirming that your feedback has been received.

The latest from america

In her new book, '(R)evolutionary Hope: A Spirituality of Encounter and Engagement in an Evolving World,' Kathleen Bonnette has brought St. Augustine’s philosophy into dialogue with 21st-century reality in ways that would impress even modern mindfulness gurus and internet pundits.
Michael T. RizziJune 27, 2024
In 'The West,' Naoíse Mac Sweeney tackles the history of the idea of the West through 14 portraits of both famous (Herodotus and Gladstone) and lesser-known historical figures (Phillis Wheatley and Tullia d’Aragona).
Joseph P. CreamerJune 27, 2024
In 'Who’s Afraid of Gender?,' Judith Butler contends that the contemporary backlash to “gender” is an attempt to recapture the transforming power structure and return to the (days when it was simple to use gender to organize power in the world.
Brianne JacobsJune 27, 2024
In 'Incarnating Grace: A Theology of Healing From Sexual Trauma,' Julia Feder is not only concerned with rejecting dangerous theological projects that have misled (and mistreated) survivors; she is also keen to plumb the depths of the Christian tradition more positively, for resources that offer
Karen Peterson-IyerJune 27, 2024