Nerve: A Memoir of Chronic Pain, Medical Trauma, and Surviving the Healthcare System (Large Print Edition)
Paperback
Biographies GeneralHealth General
Publisher Price: $21.99
Publisher: Ecw Books
Published: Jul 1 2026
Pages: 310
Weight: 1.19
Height: 0.65 Width: 7.00 Depth: 10.00
Language: English
LARGE PRINT EDITION
When Erika Conrad-Wess first developed sudden electric shocks of pain in her face, she assumed the problem would be temporary.
It wasn't.
Instead, the attacks marked the beginning of a decades-long struggle with trigeminal neuropathic pain-one of the most severe and poorly understood chronic pain conditions in medicine.
What followed was not just physical suffering, but a collision with a healthcare system often unequipped to recognize, treat, or even believe patients whose illnesses cannot be easily explained.
In NERVE, Erika chronicles her journey through failed procedures, medical trauma, misdiagnosis, and the psychological toll of living inside a body that no longer feels safe. As surgeries accumulate and hope repeatedly rises and collapses, she is forced to confront impossible questions:
- What happens when cure is no longer attainable?
- How do you build a meaningful life when pain becomes permanent?
- And how do you hold onto your identity when the institutions meant to help you begin to fracture your trust?
Told with candor, dark wit, and hard-earned insight, NERVE is both a deeply personal memoir and a broader examination of chronic illness, patient advocacy, and the uneasy limits of modern medicine. It is a story about resilience-but not the polished, inspirational kind. It is about adaptation, grief, endurance, and learning to move forward even when healing does not arrive in the form you hoped for.
For readers of The Invisible Kingdom, Between Two Kingdoms, and Brain on Fire, NERVE offers an unflinching look at life inside chronic pain-and a reminder that even in the wreckage, meaning can still be made.
An inspiring testament to fortitude and resilience. - Mark E. Linskey, MD
This Large Print Edition contains the same content as the standard edition and is presented in a 7 × 10-inch format with enlarged, easy-to-read text for improved readability.
Also from
Conrad-Wess, Erika
Nerve: A Memoir of Chronic Pain, Medical Trauma, and Surviving the Healthcare System
Conrad-Wess, Erika
Paperback
Nerve: A Memoir of Chronic Pain, Medical Trauma, and Surviving the Healthcare System
Conrad-Wess, Erika
Hardcover
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Pete Welding (ED.)
Toby Byron (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
Trump, Mary L.
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
Cooper, Christian
Hardcover
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Wittman, Robert K.
Kinney, David
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover
