Ill Feelings: stories of unexplained illness

Ill Feelings (paperback) (kindle) Ill Feelings: stories of unexplained illness

Author	Alice Hattrick
Country	United Kingdom (alternative cover), Australia
Language	English
Subject	ME/CFS, medically unexplained physical symptoms, literary criticism, gender bias, medical gaslighting, stigma and discrimination
Genre	Memoir
Publisher	Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK), Scribe publications (Australia)
Publication date	Aug 25, 2021
Media type	Paperback, kindle
Pages	360
ISBN	9781913097646, 9781922310149
Website	https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/ill-feelings

Background

Alice Hattrick's mother became ill with ME/CFS when Alice was eight; diagnosis took two years. Alice also developed ME/CFS as a child, and remains ill. Ill Feelings reflects on Alice's experirnces, and those of other disabled writers, and the the attitudes of the medical profession and society in general on poorly understood or unexplained illness.

Synopsis

"In 1995 Alice’s mother collapsed with pneumonia. She never fully recovered and was eventually diagnosed with ME, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Then Alice got ill. Their symptoms mirrored their mother’s and appeared to have no physical cause; they received the same diagnosis a few years later. Ill Feelings blends memoir, medical history, biography and literary non-fiction to uncover both of their case histories, and branches out into the records of ill health that women have written about in diaries and letters. Their cast of characters includes Virginia Woolf and Alice James, the poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson, John Ruskin’s lost love Rose la Touche, the artist Louise Bourgeois and the nurse Florence Nightingale. Suffused with a generative, transcendent rage, Alice Hattrick’s genre-bending debut is a moving and defiant exploration of life with a medically unexplained illness." (source: Fitzcarraldo Editions)

Reception

• Feb 2022, Ill Feelings by Alice Hattrick book review - Times Literary Supplement
• Sep 2021, Kirsty Hendry responds to Alice Hattrick's new book Ill Feelings - MAP Magazine review by a disabled reviewer
• Ill Feelings - Feature by The White Review

Online presence

• Website
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• Facebook
• YouTube

See also

• Alice Hattrick
• Myalgic encephalomyelitis (M.E.)
• Contested illness
• Stigma and discrimination

Learn more

• Chapter 1: Ill Feelings extract - Scribe publications

Bias in research is "a systematic deviation of an observation from the true clinical state". (Learn more: me-pedia.org)

bias Bias in research is "a systematic deviation of an observation from the true clinical state". (Learn more: me-pedia.org)

See myalgic encephalomyelitis.

See chronic fatigue syndrome.

myalgic encephalomyelitis (M.E.) - A disease often marked by neurological symptoms, but fatigue is sometimes a symptom as well. Some diagnostic criteria distinguish it from chronic fatigue syndrome, while other diagnostic criteria consider it to be a synonym for chronic fatigue syndrome. A defining characteristic of ME is post-exertional malaise (PEM), or post-exertional neuroimmune exhaustion (PENE), which is a notable exacerbation of symptoms brought on by small exertions. PEM can last for days or weeks. Symptoms can include cognitive impairments, muscle pain (myalgia), trouble remaining upright (orthostatic intolerance), sleep abnormalities, and gastro-intestinal impairments, among others. An estimated 25% of those suffering from ME are housebound or bedbound. The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies ME as a neurological disease.

myalgic encephalomyelitis (M.E.) - A disease often marked by neurological symptoms, but fatigue is sometimes a symptom as well. Some diagnostic criteria distinguish it from chronic fatigue syndrome, while other diagnostic criteria consider it to be a synonym for chronic fatigue syndrome. A defining characteristic of ME is post-exertional malaise (PEM), or post-exertional neuroimmune exhaustion (PENE), which is a notable exacerbation of symptoms brought on by small exertions. PEM can last for days or weeks. Symptoms can include cognitive impairments, muscle pain (myalgia), trouble remaining upright (orthostatic intolerance), sleep abnormalities, and gastro-intestinal impairments, among others. An estimated 25% of those suffering from ME are housebound or bedbound. The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies ME as a neurological disease.