Through the Shadowlands: A Science Writer's Odyssey into an Illness Science Doesn't Understand

Through the Shadowlands:A Science Writer's Odyssey into an Illness Science Doesn't Understand, a memoir by Julie Rehmeyer

Synopsis
Science journalist Julie Rehmeyer was so sick she sometimes couldn't turn over in bed. The top specialists in the world were powerless to help, and scientific research on her disease was at a near standstill. She was running out of money. And she was all alone, with no one to care for her.

Having exhausted the plausible ideas, Rehmeyer turned to an implausible one. She followed the advice of strangers she'd met on the Internet. They struck her as crazy--but they had recovered from chronic fatigue syndrome as severe as hers. Leaving behind everything she owned, she drove into the desert, testing the theory that mold in her home and belongings was making her sick. Stripped of the life she'd known and the future she'd imagined, Rehmeyer felt as though she were going to the desert to die.

But she didn't die. She used her scientific savvy and investigative journalism skills to find a path to wellness--and uncovered how shocking scientific neglect and misconduct had forced her, and millions of others, to go it alone. In stunning prose, Rehmeyer describes how her illness transformed her understanding of science, medicine, and spirituality. Through the Shadowlands will bring scientific authority to a misunderstood disease while telling an incredible and compelling story of tenacity, resourcefulness, acceptance, and love.

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 * 2017, "An Illness Observed: A Conversation with Julie Rehmeyer" by Dianne Timblin in American Scientist