Lonely Patient: How We Experience Illness

When someone is diagnosed with a serious illness, he or she is taking the first step on an overwhelmingly challenging and confusing journey. For many, it is as if they are traveling to someplace entirely new and they must go there alone, with only faded directions back to their old lives. Often, even their loved ones can only guess at what they must be experiencing.

The Lonely Patient is a clear-eyed and deeply affecting examination of the inner life of those grappling with illness…