Emily K. Abel. Sick and Tired: An Intimate History of Fatigue.

Abstract

Just months into the current COVID-19 pandemic, reports began to emerge about what came to be termed long COVID, a cluster of symptoms that lingered (or emerged) months after acute infection, ranging from fever, chills, and aches and pains, to vision problems, brain fog, and chronic exhaustion. Patients complaining about these symptoms, disproportionately women, were dismissed, told to rest or “take it easy,” or advised to see a therapist to treat presumably stress-induced symptoms. As the pandemic has dragged on, however, these people have formed a virtual community that successfully pressured the medical establishment to acknowledge this devastating new form of illness. Indeed, some doctors hypothesize that the potential threat posed by long COVID, a chronic affliction that is both difficult to diagnose and to treat, could be as devastating as acute infection. Emily K. Abel’s new book Sick and Tired: An Intimate History of Fatigue reminds us that conflicts over the right to assert symptoms has long been a component of industrial medicine. Her book begins with the interesting observation that fatigue—the sort of profound, long-lasting exhaustion that limits everyday activities and is not fixed with rest—has become a serious medical concern over the past two centuries, one linked with numerous diagnoses and often with devastating ramifications, yet impossible to definitively diagnose, let alone cure. She tells the story of medical and cultural efforts to define, recognize, and treat fatigue by means of an autobiographical narrative line, using her struggle to understand her own debilitating fatigue—possibly caused by aggressive treatment she received for breast cancer—as a structural line holding the book together.