For many of us, time spent in recovery—from a broken leg, a virus, chronic illness, or the crisis of depression or anxiety—can feel like an unwelcome obstacle on the road to health. Modern medicine too often assumes that once doctors have prescribed a course of treatment, healing takes care of itself. But recovery isn’t something that “just happens.” It is an act that we engage in and that has the potential to transform our lives, if only we can find ways to learn its rhythms and invest our time, energy, and participation.
Drawing on thirty years of medicine, and on insights from practitioners, psychologists, and writers across history, physician Gavin Francis delivers a profound, practical, and deeply hopeful guide to recovery. Rejecting the idea that healing is passive, Recovery offers tools and wisdom for convalescence, and shows how tending to our bodies, environments, and perspectives can help us move through the landscape of illness—and come out the other side whole.
Contents
Note to the Reader
1. The Lost Art of Convalescence
2. Hospitals and Recovery
3. Snakes and Ladders
4. Permission to Recover
5. Travel
6. The Rest Cure
7. Back to Nature
8. The Ideal Doctor
9. Writing Your Own Story
10. On Caregivers
11. Treatments
12. The (Occasional) Advantages of Illness
Conclusions
Thanks
Notes on Sources
“Francis sheds nuanced light on an often fraught and private experience, and encourages readers to reimagine illnesses as ‘stories of the mind and body’ because ‘within limits, stories can be rewritten.’ Those on the mend may gain the most, but readers of all stripes will find wisdom here.” – Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Recovery is an essential book for our times, full of wisdom, compassion and sound advice. Every patient needs a copy of this gem.” –Katherine May, author of Wintering and Enchantment
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