Readers of Sick follow Khakpour as she repeatedly seeks help from the medical establishment but comes up empty handed again and again. Published this year after much critical anticipation, Sick charts Khakpour's circuitous and at times maddening path to receiving a diagnosis of late-stage Lyme.
She firmly believes that something is wrong with her body, but she is forced to question whether the symptoms she experiences are psychological, physical in nature, or something else altogether. Because of this lack of clinical, social, and cultural support, Khakpour experiences Lyme as a vast unknown. In Khakpour's words, the disease is seen as one "of hypochondriacs and alarmists and rich people who have the money and time to go chasing obscure diagnoses" (21). As such, doctors frequently regard Lyme with skepticism. There is also no way to prove that one has been cured of the disease. "It is unlikely I will ever know when I contracted ," she writes, "just as it is unlikely I will ever be rid of it entirely" (3). In the opening pages of her memoir Sick (2018), Porochista Khakpour tells readers that even though she has lived with Lyme for most of her life, her knowledge of the disease is full of gaps.
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