Ask Me About My Uterus A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women's Pain

Description

In the fall of 2010, Abby Norman was repeatedly hospitalized in excruciating pain. Over the next several months her strong dancer’s body dropped forty pounds, and the hair at her temples went gray. The doctors told her it was probably stress or a UTI, and sent her home with antibiotics and a referral to a therapist. Unable to get out of bed, much less attend class, Norman was forces to drop out of college and embark on what would become a years-long journey to discover why she was ill.

By turns humorous, infuriating, and triumphant, Ask Me About My Uterus is a gripping medical mystery and an inspiring story of perseverance and empowerment. It wasn’t until she took matters into her own hands–securing a job in a hospital and educating herself in the medical library–that Norman found an accurate diagnosis of endometriosis. But then an even more unusual medical condition befell her and when her doctors were once again mystified, Norman realized the struggle had only just begun.

With a science writer’s fierce commitment to truth and a profound literary sensibility, Norman weaves together medical research past and present, putting her own trials into a broad historical and political context.