What Doesn't Kill You

Tessa Miller was a driven young writer building her life in New York City when, on an ordinary autumn day, her stomach began to cramp so violently that she could barely function. For a while she tried to push through, calling in sick and spending long stretches confined to the bathroom or her bed. Once the pain could no longer be ignored, she followed her family's urging and went to the hospital, which launched years of tests, wrong diagnoses, and dangerous infections.

Even after she was correctly diagnosed with Crohn's disease, a new challenge emerged: accepting that she would never fully recover.

Alongside her own story, Miller reports on a broader reality. By her account, roughly three in five American adults now live with a chronic condition, and that share is expected to grow after the pandemic. The book considers arthritis, asthma, Crohn's, diabetes, endometriosis, multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, and other incurable illnesses, and argues that they affect nearly everyone, whether the sufferer is a coworker, a loved one, or the reader. It also looks at the shame and isolation that still surround long-term sickness, and at the physical and emotional strain of balancing relationships and work while living with the constant possibility of new complications.

Miller weaves these experiences into a candid examination of the medical, workplace, and social realities that come with a lifelong diagnosis. Drawing on hard-won insight and a sense of solidarity with others in the same position, she offers readers a hopeful message about finding joy despite a chronic illness, along with a way to make sense of it all.