Читать онлайн «Sick: A Memoir»
Автор Porochista Khakpour
Disclaimer
This book contains my personal story. I am not a medical professional, and, therefore, the inadvertent advice and information I share throughout this book is in no way intended to be construed as medical advice. If you know or suspect that you have a health problem, it is recommended that you seek the advice of your physician or other professional advisor before embarking on any medical program or treatment.
Dedication
Epigraph
“Those great wars which the body wages with the mind a slave to it, in the solitude of the bedroom against the assault of fever or the oncome of melancholia, are neglected. Nor is the reason far to seek. To look these things squarely in the face would need the courage of a lion tamer; a robust philosophy; a reason rooted in the bowels of the earth. ”
—Virginia Woolf,
“Do you believe, she went on, that the past dies?
Yes, said Margaret. Yes, if the present cuts its throat. ”
—Leonora Carrington,
Contents
Author’s Note
On the Wrong Body
Prologue
1: Iran and Los Angeles
2: New York
3: Maryland and Illinois
On Support
4: Los Angeles
5: New York
On Appearances
6: Pennsylvania
7: Santa Fe and Leipzig
On Place
8: Los Angeles
9: Santa Fe
On Being a Bad Sick Person
10: New York
On Love Lost & Found
11: Everywhere Else & Away
Epilogue
Author’s Note
It seems impossible to tell this story without getting the few certainties out of the way, the closest one can come to “facts. ” The hardest part of living with Lyme disease for me has always been the lack of concrete “knowns” and how much they tend to morph and blur over the years, with the medical community and public perception and even within my own body. To pinpoint this disease, to define it, in and of itself is something of a labor already.
Still: Lyme disease is a clinical diagnosis, a disease that is transmitted by a tick bite.
The disease is caused by a spiral-shaped bacteria (spirochete) called
