Nerve: A Memoir of Chronic Pain, Medical Trauma, and Surviving the Healthcare System

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

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Ecw Books
Published: 07/01/2026
ISBN: 9798996661800
Pages: 236
Weight: 0.71lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.54d