Sick: A Memoir

I hated this book! As someone who has Lyme I am embarrassed by this writer’s poor attempt to write an encouraging memoir. She is a self indulgent and spoiled woman, always couch surfing, sponging off people, and ruining attempts at good health by drug use, etc. She seems much more interested in finding the next man to take care of her than actually learning how to take care of herself. The only sense I get from her is that she is full of “woe is me” and bedding man after man to feel better about herself. She left so many people high and dry after committing to and then backing out of job after job. Never seems to take any responsibility for being so irresponsible all the time!! I’ve been ill a long time and I’ve learned to fight for myself, researching options, getting treatments without relying on everyone else to do everything for me. The author mentions being broke so often yet buys drugs, a dog from a breeder, is jetting off to places over and over. I agree with someone else’s review that they couldn’t believe people kept sending her money, gifts, etc. She’s a spoiled brat because people helped keep her that way. I know a woman just like this, and she has left a sea of pisssed off people in her wake who were dumb enough to help her and get tossed aside. This author seems to be exactly like her. I’ve read other books with people who have Lyme and truly were informative about getting treatment. Skip this book!!!

As someone who suffers from a chronic illness and other mysterious maladies, I was excited to pick up this book and read it. In many ways, we read to know we’re not alone and while I don’t suffer from Lyme disease, I also feel that the healthcare industry has failed me as a woman and other women. That failure is evident in Khakpour’s memoir when we see her going from doctors to specialists trying to find the answer. There was a scene in the book where she is hospitalized and she can hear the doctor and the nurse laughing at her. It was scenes like that and the writer’s references to feelings of displacement, feeling like her body isn’t her own that made me really enjoy the book. As a whole, though, I struggled with the book.In a memoir that was supposed to be about being living undiagnosed with Lyme disease and then finally receiving treatment, I thought it was less about that than it was about chronicling the writer’s many romantic interests and her drug addictions. Many of these men were not central to the storyline, nor did they serve any purpose for me. They were distracting. With regards to the drug addictions, there were a lot of instances where I thought that the writer was obsessed with looking heroin-chic, as was common in the 90’s. There were repeat paragraphs on it.At one point in the book, the writer references her discomfort being around wealthy people and that was not the vibe I got at all. At one point, she mentioned that she and a love interest spent a lot of time in the Hamptons, a notorious place for wealthy people to go to. She also seemed snide to a lot of people, so I didn’t understand how everyone kept paying for things for her, like when she mentioned she scored hundreds of dollars worth of heroin. Just, how?I found the book difficult to follow along. While I am a fan of disjointed prose, the memoir felt all over the place to me. In the afterword, Khakpour wrote that she was sick while writing this. Like many other readers, I question the editing process and how prose wasn’t trimmed or adjusted to flow better. Even the chapters and scenes felt out of alignment for me. The diagnosis of Lyme doesn’t come until the middle of the book and prior to that, I kept getting confused about the mention of it. It would pop up that she had it but the official word didn’t arrive until later. Sometimes the writing felt vague and rambling, almost. I wish that there was less romantic interests and more about her illness, like how it was marketed.

I appreciate that this is her memoir and life experiences. However, it is more about her life experiences with drugs, sex, and such than it is with battling chronic Lymes. Her experiences with Lymes seems like an afterthought in each chapter. Quick throw something in about that..... As a person who deals daily with chronic Lymes for the past 10 years, I was hoping to connect but this memoir is far more whining and woes than truly finding inner strength to overcome it. Greatly disappointed.

I didn't get past the first chapter as I found the writer too repetitively self pitying. Another purchase for the charity shop!