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The darkly funny memoir of Sarah Ramey’s years-long battle with a mysterious illness that doctors thought was all in her head—but wasn’t. A revelation and an inspiration for millions of women whose legitimate health complaints are ignored.

In her harrowing, defiant, and unforgettable memoir, Sarah Ramey recounts the decade-long saga of how a seemingly minor illness in her senior year of college turned into a prolonged and elusive condition that destroyed her health but that doctors couldn't diagnose or treat. Worse, as they failed to cure her, they hinted that her devastating symptoms were psychological.

The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a memoir with a mission: to help the millions of (mostly) women who suffer from unnamed or misunderstood conditions--autoimmune illnesses, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic Lyme disease, chronic pain, and many more. Ramey's pursuit of a diagnosis and cure for her own mysterious illness becomes a page-turning medical mystery that reveals a new understanding of today's chronic illnesses as ecological in nature, driven by modern changes to the basic foundations of health, from the quality of our sleep, diet, and social connections to the state of our microbiomes. Her book will open eyes, change lives, and, ultimately, change medicine.

  • “By making 'The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness' so smart, funny, and engaging, Sarah Ramey has found a way to turn live-saving medicine into a delicious read. I've given this book to so many people and they've all come back with overwhelming gratitude.”

    Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto and The Dutch House

  • "Sarah Ramey is a person of uncommon wit, bravery, compassion, honesty, and intellect. Every one of those qualities is on full display in this unflinching, important, and stunningly written memoir, which gives voice to millions of women whose experiences and pain have been ignored and minimized."

    Ed Yong, author of I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

  • "This is a book for anyone who has ever asked a question that didn’t have an immediate or easy answer, anyone who has worried about themselves or a loved one who isn’t getting better—despite following all the experts’ advice—and anyone interested in their own health, public health, or medicine. In other words, it’s a book with something resonant and useful for all of us. It’s also, not incidentally, a terrific read."

    Chelsea Clinton, author of The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience

  • "How do you take topics as heavy as chronic illness, debilitating pain and medical misogyny and package them in a way that makes people want to keep reading? I don’t rightly know, but Sarah Ramey clearly does. This book about women with mysterious illnesses not being taken seriously by medical professionals had me laughing out loud from the very first line."

    BookPage’s Most Anticipated List

  • "This is so much more than memoir - it’s a barbaric yawp. It’s a manifesto, it’s researched, it's funny, it’s a page-turner, it’s a thriller. I think over time it will become an established part of the literary memoir and medical literature canons, one of those books that has marathon legs and will be studied for generations to come."

    Jamie Quatro, author of Fire Sermon

  • “With brilliant storytelling, Sarah Ramey tells of her experience with a mysterious illness while weaving in a practical roadmap for the woman who is overwhelmed, confused, depressed, desperate, and suffering with confusing symptoms. A masterwork and a page-turning, fantastic read.”

    Alisa Vitti, author of Woman Code

  • “A visceral, scathing, erudite read that digs deep into how modern medicine continues to fail women and what can be done about it.”

    Booklist, Starred Review

  • “This book is a song. It's funny, passionate, angry, and not apologetic at all. I read it in the depths of quarantine, and was simultaneously consoled and provoked by its evocation of an isolation I hadn't fully understood or imagined. It kept me up at night in the way the best books do.”

    Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams

  • “Illuminating . . . Though this medical saga is disturbing in the many miscalculations her doctors made, Ramey’s hilarious and upbeat sense of humor lightens even the direst of circumstances . . . Her uncanny grit and fortitude will deeply inspire the multitudes facing similar issues.”

    Publisher’s Weekly, Starred Review

  • “Dark, potent, and delightfully clever, Sarah Ramey spirit-guides readers through the greatest depiction of the heroine’s journey we’ve seen in years. No matter what you’ve chosen to read in the past, I genuinely believe you will find something to love in this book. I have never read anything like Ramey’s story. It’s clever, yet educational. Scientific, yet spiritual. Funny, and yet so, so tragic.”

    Hannah Oxley, Review