Oh boy. Where do I begin with this? This is going to sound harsh, but I am going to be brutally honest here.

First and foremost, she has no self-awareness at all. She goes on transphobic, hundred-page-long rants at random points about how women and men are different and how gender is a social construct but just kidding it's actually not and in case you didn't get that she's a TERF, why doesn't she add 90 references to Harry Potter in every sentence? She never acknowledges her privilege as a rich white patient (maybe once or twice in the beginning, but not nearly enough), yet describes countless instances of her visiting 900 doctors, not struggling financially at all, having lost of medical connections through her family, and so much more. You can't write a book about biases in medicine and NEVER bring up racial biases.

Now let's step aside from how problematic it is and talk about the actual memoir parts:

I feel for her. I relate to a lot of the gaslighting she experienced in the medical field. But that is the entire memoir-- it's just bad medical visits, no arc, her coming to the same realization over and over and over again, reminders that she is the biggest victim, just repetitive "and then they said I had no issues so I tried yoga and then I realized it was all stress-induced and so is your pain, and some people have fibromyalgia and some people have cancer but my pain is so much worse than all of their pain so fuck you all, WOMIs. And on that note, fuck doctors. And by the way, dear reader-- have I mentioned my flaming anus in this sentence? What about Hogwarts? Hades? My singing career? Click. Trauma causes disease. CRPS is more painful than anything in the entire universe, and my vagina hurts. In conclusion, gluten."

So other than being a racist, classist, transphobic mess, and other than its annoying narration and plotlessness, it's also just completely medically inaccurate. As another reviewer mentioned, there are no sources at all to back up 90% of what she's saying, yet she writes with the confidence of a medical reference book.

At the end of the day, you get nothing from this. The "handbook" could be summarized in a 2-minute wikiHow article, and that article would be utter bullshit. This makes me want to write my own memoir to counteract the bullshit that this book spewed into the world. ( )

informative

This is a long, difficult, and sometimes excruciating book to read (or in my case, listen to). But it needs to be done and absorbed. I’ve not experienced any of the issues as the author, so I think my takeaway was somewhat different than what was intended.

The broad scope seems to be that women need to speak up for healing themselves as well as the world, but I’m thinking first we need to shout out about asshole (& many more swears) traditional medical doctors. Holy crap they’re awful, and this author has had either some good forgiveness or some good forgetting in her life.

All I keep thinking about is her saying how her doctor dad came around at the end (showing understanding and hearing her thoughts) and how it showed hope for us all. No. If a man cannot see his own daughter being tortured and in pain for over a decade and not listen, there’s a problem. If he finally after a decade hears his daughter rather than relying on what his education and training tells him, there’s a problem. If it took this man so long to do anything to change his own practice, then we sure as shit are going to have a hard time getting other docs with no personal connection to change anytime soon. ( )