The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness

Chapter 18 opens the final part of O’Rourke’s book and begins with a question about what it means for a person with chronic illness to heal. O’Rourke states telling the story of her illness truthfully requires her to recount the setbacks that are always a part of being sick. In the spring of 2017, she and her baby are both infected by a virus from which she does not recover. At the same time, chemotherapy has left her father frail and with a weak heart. After Dr. H recommends more antibiotics to counter her Lyme infection, she hesitates and goes instead to visit Washington’s Olympic National Park to find some rest. While in the park, O’Rourke encounters a sense of silence that invites reflection on the past two years of slow recovery. She has been brought back to some parts of herself, certainly, but clarifies that she is not “better” in the common sense of the word. She sits in the silence and feels the grief of her father’s illness, of the exhaustion of being a new mother, and of the loss of her own mother. She realizes how far she has been taken from the questions of what it means to live a life, sidetracked by asking so many questions about her own body.