More than a Patient: Building Relationships and Creating a Meaningful Life When You Have a Chronic Illness

Living with chronic illness means medical appointments, unpredictable symptoms, and the exhausting work of managing your health. Relationships often become casualties. Friends drift away. Dating feels impossible. Family dynamics strain under caregiving pressures. The isolation can be as painful as the physical symptoms themselves.

In this groundbreaking, compassionate guide, psychotherapist and chronic illness and rare disease expert Jodi Taub-who lives with primary immunodeficiency and associated conditions-teaches you how to rebuild and strengthen the connections that matter most. Drawing from almost three decades as a therapist specializing in chronic illness and hard-won insights from her own lived experience, Taub provides practical strategies for challenges familiar to patients: handling unhelpful comments, dating with a diagnosis, managing mental health, navigating caregiving relationships, and working with medical teams.

You didn't choose to be sick, but you can choose what to do with it. The right relationships can transform your experience, and this book will help you build them.