You Don’t Look Sick!

You Don’t Look Sick!
Joy H. Selak and Stevens S. Overman, MD, MPH
Haworth Press
ISBN: 0-7890-2449-7
Non-Fiction, Health, Chronic Illness
Reviewed by Dr. Tami Brady

You don’t look sick. Although our stories may vary, this is the one phrase that all of us living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and other invisible chronic illnesses have experienced, dread, and fear the most. It’s hard enough to live in pain, fight through fibrofog, and deal with lost independence but this simply utterance makes us feel like we have to explain ourselves and frankly the explanation is never quite good enough. We leave the conversation with a feeling that getting sick was somehow our fault and that we aren’t getting better because we aren’t trying hard enough. Somehow we are flawed human beings.
You Don’t Look Sick! is the experience of one woman (with the help of her doctor). Her story is very familiar. Like most of us, her journey just to get a diagnosis was long and painful. Getting appropriate help and coming to terms with the “Chronic” part of her condition contained even more challenges. Still, the author’s illustrates that although it may not be possible to rid ourselves completely of this terror, we can bring ourselves to a place where we live well. A message we could all take heart in.