This book is one that I’ve read for a book group. I write this on Tuesday evening and we discuss it tomorrow. It was chosen for us by the library, and some day soonish I will talk more about book groups and how they can be run. The library gives us interesting books to read, but we don’t have to like them.
I’m going on record as not having liked this book. It’s well written and I can see how it would help people understand what it’s like to live with chronic illness. And that’s exactly what I didn’t like about it, I felt seen. The author has rheumatoid arthritis, it’s not a nice health issue to have. I’m lucky in that I don’t have anything like this, but I do have a number of other chronic health conditions which interact with each other. The pain comes and goes. The discomfort comes and goes. The exhaustion comes and goes. Some days I will cook dinner and then go straight to bed because I’m too tired to eat. While Brabon doesn’t mention this specific instance of exhaustion, she does go through other issues which illustrated my life.
We are shown how hard it can be to recover and keep going with a chronic illness following an operation. We are shown that society expects that having had an operation and then having had a decent amount of recovery time then we will miraculously be better. Sometimes better means the pain in that leg that was operated on is gone, but then other pains will surface. But now that we’ve recovered from the operation we’re suddenly better.
Unless you’ve lived with chronic illness it’s really hard to understand that things go in cycles. That the part of the body in the biggest pain often covers up other pain. It’s only when that part is healed that other pain makes itself felt.
And when I say ‘society expects’ it’s really hard to say whether society really expects this or if we’re projecting what we think society expects of us. We feel as if we should be whole and not sick, it feels as if that is what society expects. But when we’re not whole and sick we feel society expects us to recover and get better. When you have one or more chronic health conditions you may not recover completely.
This is what happens with the character in the book. She recovers to a certain degree, but you can’t cure her illness. She is always going to have problems. She makes two friends in this book. They approach health issues very differently. One wants to tackle the health problem by swimming her way out of it, the other wants to rest before starting exercise. I feel she needs aspects of both people.
Swimming can be good exercise in general, and to add specific exercises to strengthen muscles after an operation is even better. But it’s far too easy to swim too much if you have chronic health conditions. And then there’s the resting. It’s sometimes hard to figure out how much you need to rest before starting exercise.
This evening I write this somewhere in the middle. I cooked dinner, enjoyed some of it and then realised I was too tired to continue. I have been overdoing it these last few days and it’s caught up with me. Anyone with good health would be able to do more, but my body often says I’m an idiot for even attempting this.
Will I ever recommend this book to a friend or family member who doesn’t make any attempt to understand that sometimes the body says ‘no’? Not sure. It is a good book, it’s well written and it’s lovely to see parts of Melbourne I never physically see. I think it depends on the person and how our relationship is.