The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness

In Chapter 3, after experiencing new symptoms despite her vigilant diet, O’Rourke falls into a period of isolation. She defines this time as one of serious fatigue and little social activity. In lieu of socializing, she commits to a regimen of “homegrown” research and gets tested for adrenal fatigue, an ailment recognized by Eastern medicine that finally explains her exhaustion. As her apartment increasingly becomes her world, O’Rourke begins to understand that the severity of her experience is only exacerbated by the realities of the current US medical system. She writes that though disease has always been a part of human life, the way humans understand it has shifted. For centuries, Greek, Chinese, and other cultures’ understanding of disease has been related to the entire body’s balance. Western medicine, however, now classifies disease as falling into one of three categories: physical, psychological, or stress-induced. Autoimmune disease falls into this third category because it combines factors related both to a person’s biography and their biology.

The advent of “germ theory” pushes Western medicine toward an overly simplistic healing modality that prioritizes finding the disease-causing microbe and killing it. Therefore, if the doctor can’t find the disease, it does not exist.