I have read and re-read "Sick- A compilation zine on physical illness" and each time I do, I get new things out of it. I often wonder though, how people without illness would view the zine, if they would get as much of, if anything from it. Regardless, I highly recommend this zine for those struggling with physical illness and for anyone who has a friend or loved one who is sick.
There is some great advice in this book, but there is also just a lot of beautiful writing. I particularly liked Kristin Alysia Pape's piece about living with pain as a result of her MS and diabetes. She writes about our lack of useful language in describing pain: " Our metaphors for pain are always about violence to the body … I'm trying to find a more accurate language, one that accounts for the pain of disease without casting the disease as a violent opposition, an enemy army. Being constantly at war is exhausting." I couldn't agree more. Sometimes, lying in bed, pain rolling up and down my legs like waves, I think that my pain isn't always necessarily unpleasant. There is a wide spectrum of sensation involved with the body, and the way we describe it in the English language doesn't always account for this variety.
Another point in Pape's essay to which I could relate is the section where she describes giving herself shots. I'm not sure how often she has to do this, but because I give myself five shots a day, I knew how she felt when she wrote: "Think of stopping the treatment that only makes you sick so that you don't get sicker. Dream, guilty, of release: wheelchair, numbness, the body finally silenced, nothing left to be done. Tell yourself you're just tired. Irrational. Know you'll dutifully do it, the shot, again, on schedule." This is the kind of statement only a really sick person can truly understand. You don't have to worry about making the wrong choice because in the end, you know, begrudgingly, that you'll make the only decision you can make: the decision to go on living.
There is a bunch of other really great stuff in the zine. Several pieces deal with how to treat yourself when you're sick, others address how to be a good friend to someone with an illness. So please if you have even a marginal interest in the topic, if you know someone who is sick, or if you yourself are sick, buy this zine!!
It's published by Microcosm Publishing, 222 S Rogers St., Bloomington, IN 47404
