What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Jean-Dominique Bauby · 141 pages
The author, former editor of French Elle magazine, describes the rare stroke to the brain stem that left his mind intact in a nearly totally paralyzed body.
The Girl With Nine Wigs
Sophie van der Stap · 279 pages
"'It's Saturday and everything is different. No, I didn't go to the market this morning and I didn't have my usual coffee on Westerstraat. And no, I wasn't getting ready for a new semester at college. Next Monday, January 31st, I have to admit myself at the hospital for my first chemotherapy session. For the next two months, I'm expected each week for a fresh shot of vincristine, etoposide, ifosfa
The Man Who Couldn't Eat
Jon Reiner · 313 pages
"Based on his Esquire magazine article, The man who couldn't eat is the very personal journey of Jon Reiner's struggle with chronic illness"--
Girl in the Dark
Anna Lyndsey · 258 pages
"Anna was living a normal life. She was ambitious and worked hard; she had just bought an apartment; she was falling in love. But then she started to develop worrying symptoms: her face felt like it was burning whenever she was in front of the computer. Soon this progressed to an intolerance of fluorescent light, then of sunlight itself. The reaction soon spread to her entire body. Now, when her s
The Two Kinds of Decay
Sarah Manguso · 184 pages
"At twenty-one, just starting to comprehend the usual puzzles of adulthood, Sarah Manguso was faced with yet another: a wildly unpredictable autoimmune disease that appeared suddenly and tore through her twenties, paralyzing her for weeks at a time, programming her first to expect nothing from life, and then, furiously, to expect everything ... Manguso recounts her struggle: blood cleansings, coll
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
Susannah Cahalan · 288 pages
The book narrates Cahalan's issues with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis and the process by which she was diagnosed with this form of encephalitis. She wakes up in a hospital with no memory of the events of the previous month, during which time she would have violent episodes and delusions. Her eventual diagnosis is made more difficult by various physicians misdiagnosing her with several theories s
Lucky Man
Michael J. Fox · 304 pages
This memoir discusses Michael J. Fox’s life--growing up in Canada and then becoming a national television star in the U.S. at the age of 19. Fox reveals the excess and temptations he fell into as a young star, and how with the help of his wife, Tracy Pollan, he quit drinking and drowning in self-pity. He tells of noticing the first tremors of Parkinson’s disease, which he ignored; finding out at t
Growing Up Again: Life, Love and Oh Yeah, Diabetes
Mary Tyler Moore · 228 pages
Mary Tyler Moore, actress and activist, relates the highs and lows of living with type 1 diabetes for the past forty years, while also tapping into the vast diabetes research network to talk to leading experts who are discovering new ways to control diabetes and its complications.
Everybody's Got Something
Robin Roberts, Veronica Chambers · 263 pages
Wide Awake and Dreaming: A Memoir
Julie Flygare · 214 pages
Awkward Bitch: My Life with MS
Marlo Donato Parmelee · 316 pages
In the Body of the World
Eve Ensler · 221 pages
The author of The Vagina Monologues describes being diagnosed and treated for uterine cancer and how her illness forced her to reconnect with her own body and gave her a better understanding of the resilience of humans.
Beautiful Affliction
Lene Fogelberg · 352 pages
Our Cancer Year
Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner
A graphic novel which depicts Harvey Pekar's struggle with cancer.
The Camera My Mother Gave Me
Susanna Kaysen · 168 pages
"The Camera My Mother Gave Me takes us through Susanna Kaysen's often comic, sometimes surreal encounters with all kinds of doctors - internists, gynecologists, "alternative health" experts - as well as with her boyfriend and her friends, when suddenly, inexplicably, "something went wrong" with her vagina."--BOOK JACKET.
Mortality
Christopher Hitchens
"Courageous, insightful and candid thoughts on malady and mortality from one of our most celebrated writers"--Provided by the publisher.
Happy
Alex Lemon · 292 pages
His freshman year of college, Alex Lemon was supposed to be the star catcher on the Macalester College baseball team. He was the boy getting every girl, the hard-partying kid who everyone called Happy, often without even knowing his real name. In the spring of 1997, he had his first stroke. For two years Lemon coped with his deteriorating health by sinking deeper into alcohol and drug abuse. His c
The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me
Bruce Feiler · 240 pages
Bestselling author Bruce Feiler was a young father when he was diagnosed with cancer. He instantly worried what his daughters' lives would be like without him. "Would they wonder who I was? Would they wonder what I thought? Would they yearn for my approval, my love, my voice?"Three days later he came up with a stirring idea of how he might give them that voice. He would reach out to six men from a
True Strength: My Journey from Hercules to Mere Mortal and How Nearly Dying Saved My Life
Kevin Sorbo · 296 pages
Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home
Jessica Fechtor · 279 pages
" M.F.K. Fisher meets Brain on Fire in this exquisite memoir of a 28-year-old food blogger who cooks her way back to health after a near-fatal aneurysm Jessica Fechtor was on top of the world: a Harvard graduate student, happily married, and thinking about starting a family. Then, while attending an academic conference, she went for a run and an aneurysm burst in her brain. Multiple surgeries left
Why I Wore Lipstick: To My Mastectomy
Geralyn Lucas · 208 pages
Geralyn Lucas shares her feelings and experiences after being diagnosed at age twenty-eight with breast cancer, discussing some of the choices she made, the people she met, and the courage she gained from wearing bright red lipstick to her surgery.
Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up
Selma Blair · 320 pages