The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness

Chapters 16 and 17 resolve the tensions that arise throughout Part 2. When she undergoes the FMT in England, O’Rourke identifies the research justifying this procedure as a blend of conventional and integrative medicine. The constant back and forth of her experiences with both types of medicine throughout the book are finally resolved in a treatment that symbolizes a marriage of the best of both worlds, blending conventional medicine with the holistic care of a more integrative approach. Her arrival at this elegant synthesis is the result of a long, arduous journey, and she states:

If my Lyme diagnosis had unfolded tidily years earlier—with a tick bite, a bull’s-eye rash, a quick round of antibiotics—I would never have found myself in England. But my years of searching for answers […] fundamentally altered my relationship to medical science and to my body (367).

Thus, O’Rourke gains an understanding of her body as a system both complex and intertwined. She reveals a change in herself and her own perception of her body and path toward healing: hard-earned after years of uncertainty. The miracle of her pregnancy emphasizes her success, and just as O’Rourke must advocate for her own story to make it real to others, her pregnancy, too, feels like something she might need to fight to keep. Finally, however, her body gives her the gift of health as her pregnancy continues, and there is a sense that not all stories are something that O’Rourke will need to tirelessly fight for.

In Chapter 17, O’Rourke’s role as patient is complicated by her own father’s illness. The narrative tension around her dual status as patient and caretaker intensifies when she creates a philosophical connection between her father’s current predicament and the failure of American medical systems to diagnose her Lyme disease. She asserts, “My father’s experience dramatically illustrated the cost of the decades of uncertainty about Lyme disease and its diagnostic criteria, including the limited research and the lack of funding” (372). As a patient, as a caretaker, and a writer, O’Rourke now know thinks about the way Lyme functions with much more certainty. Or, rather, she accepts uncertainty as an inherent truth that must be endured. Her authority builds when she claims an ability to “understand the language of illness more intimately than do many of the researchers who study disease” (372). By this point in the book, and in her own life, O’Rourke has taught herself the language of illness and endeavors to teach it to others through her writing. She closes the chapter and Part 2 by claiming the power of her language and her narrative for a collective “we” of “sufferers”: “When we suffer, we want recognition. Where science is silent, narrative creeps in” (433).