Book review: Love and Fatigue in America

Love and Fatigue in America by Roger King

I've just finished this biographical novel of British author, Roger King. It tells of King's arrival in small town America, where he has come to teach at university, and is then stricken with the painful affliction of a mystery illness. Sound familiar?

King's journey spans seven years, encountering many doctors and their various responses to his struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome. Some of them are compassionate, some of them are miseducated and some of them are scams. King's retelling of visits to hosts of doctors are entertaining and humorous, while also making me regret paying the same kinds of characters to do weird, fruitless alternative stuff too.We're walked through the decline of his career, conversations with those that don't shun him in sickness, contrasting cultures of America to his London hometown, the American healthcare system and the transformation of his expectations and contentedness in life.

Lavish with openness and honesty (which I value greatly!) King shares about his sudden, debilitating physical weakness and his need to constantly be lying down, in one early instance, collapsing in the gym, and often trying to conceal his complete brain fog, confusion and urgent need for rest by laboring to put one foot in front of the other and keep a straight face. He also tells of his attempt to energise the body with cold water therapy, having cold swims and showers prior to energy consuming events. We are let in to his world, his thoughts, his new lifestyle that he learns how to cope with and his string of unsuccessful relationships where his health changes dynamics greatly. Arriving not knowing anyone, then moving around over the years in quest for comfort and affection, King's only constant companion in the book is his canine friend, Arthur.

Reading this was somewhat therapeutic for me. Having someone intricately describe a personal struggle with some aspects seeming almost identical to your own, is comforting. You are reminded that you are not actually the only one to be facing such hardship, but that someone else knows it and feels it too. There is relief to be found, in reading about another's experience of an illness that is often ignored or disputed by the mainstream medical world.
I would recommend this read, if not only for insight in to someone else's experience with CFS and how they choose to view it. There is definitely some hard earned wisdom to be taken from these pages.