The DO Book Club, March 2025: ‘At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness’

Stories and storytelling illuminate ideas and create shared understanding and connection. Stories are important—powerful ones have changed the world. Some stories happen without notice, while others impose themselves on our lives.

When we tell stories, they can help us process our grief and deal with traumatic experiences.

In this month’s Book Club read, “At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness,” author Arthur Frank states: “When storytellers know that someone recognizes an experience, they can let go of it,” Frank writes. (p.104)

As a husband, father, medical sociologist and professor, Frank shares his illness narrative throughout the book in first person, intimately sharing his experiences with two life-alternating illnesses he suffered personally: heart disease and cancer. Frank’s story is a spiritually balanced, philologically eloquent and personally moving memoir. His narrative touches both personal and professional issues that are present on both sides of the bedside. He also acknowledges the silver linings that can come with illness.

“No matter how much suffering there is, and how much we want to avoid being ill, we may need illness to help live better,” Frank writes.  He expresses and finds terms in which to celebrate illness and the growth that often follows it. (p. 15)

Illness narratives speak of lived experiences of human suffering via patient-centric stories. Storytelling is a way to share unique knowledge that can change one’s perspective and feelings, and it provides a window into the treasures of human experience and life. Hearing from others in a narrative way can help listeners evolve as caring humans. Human suffering becomes more bearable when it is shared.

A touching memoir filled with hard truths

A professor of sociology at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, this is Frank’s first book, and it was published in 1991. “At the Will of the Body” offers his stories of his illnesses as a companion to others who are experiencing maladies. His intimate account describes what it is like to have a heart attack when you believed you were physically fit and had a very low risk of having one. Frank also shares the frustration of a delayed and almost missed diagnosis of cancer; this story illuminates the flaws of Canada’s health care system.

As his various relationships are strengthened and fractured by illness, Frank, like so many other storytellers, discusses the fragility of life that many people only recognize after an illness or life-alternating event. His views on the human body and relationships will help others better understand their existence—he shares powerful perspectives that may forever change your views.

Frank wrote the book when he was feeling alienated from medicine. He mentions that he felt “disenfranchised by the medical profession and his interactions with doctors.” (p. 101) He eloquently discusses the role of caregivers and how they are intimately involved in so many aspects of illness and health. His feelings of indifference to the medical profession are beautifully written and understandable. He asks, “Are doctors acting this way because it is how they choose to act, or how they feel to act?” Frank suggests that the medical profession and the systems that guide it need to improve because “ill people deserve better.” (p. 101)

The importance of recognizing others’ suffering

The author writes that when people are suffering, health care professionals should not compare them to others. When a nurse compared her mother’s cancer death to Frank’s cancer and his wife’s loss via cancer, the comparisons diminished Frank’s own cancer experience. Illness should only be witnessed for what it is, Frank writes.

Only when there is mutual respect for each other’s experiences can healing start. Franks writes that medical staff “who make comparisons are trapped by the belief that unless they can do something to reduce the body’s suffering, they have failed in their profession. Continuing suffering threatens them, so they deny its existence.” (p. 101)

What they cannot treat, the patient is not “allowed” to experience. Physicians and other health care professionals often forget that when treatment options run out, care is still needed, Frank notes. He also says that by “simply recognizing suffering for what it is, regardless of whether it can be treated, is care.” (p. 101)

It is only when we see patients’ pain that we accept their fear. Frank suggests that patients’ lived experiences of illness need to be shared and recognized by others.

Via shared experiences of illness, one is both forced and allowed to think in new ways about the value of life. Illness takes away parts of your life, but it also can provide you with an opportunity to choose the life you will lead, as opposed to living your life haphazardly over the years.

The book is memorable with great personal and theoretical interjections. There is a dash of religious reference to Job’s experience with illness and understanding. There are also references to social psychology and phenomenology, but without the denseness of philosophical theory. In sharing his story and his reflections on illness, the book provided me with new insights into individuals and families from a systemic perspective.

‘Patients want to be treated as whole people’

In the end, the author stresses the need to be recognized as an individual, not an individual with disease. It is easy to reduce a patient to disease and forget that patients want to be treated as whole people. This read speaks to professionals, as physicians need to recognize people for their uniqueness, acknowledge differences and address patient fears. It illustrates how individuals strive to find meaning and purpose in every experience, even in pain and suffering. 

Author’s note: Arthur Franks’ other books may also be of interest: “The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics” and “The Renewal of Generosity: Illness, Medicine and How to Live.”

Related reading:

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The DO Book Club, Dec. 2024: Thought-provoking reads to enter the new year