Joy Sorman wrote Life Sciences. This book was translated from French to English. The story is about a 15 year old girl named Ninon. Ninon's mother has entertained her daughter for years with tales of bizarre illness that run in her family. Since the middle ages women in her family have come down with odd illnesses including the dancing plague of Strasburg, blindness, deafness and epilepsy. Ninon was entertained by these family stories and grew up expecting something would happen to her. One morning she wakes up in terrible pain. The skin on her arms burns when touched by her sheets or her clothes or her fingers. She experiments. The pain extends to both arms from her shoulders to her wrists. Ninon goes to doctor after doctor after specialist after therapist after shaman after acupuncturist. She is told her condition will not kill her and may go away. She is obsessed with finding relief from her pain. Doctors listen to her story but they don't really hear her. What she has is called allodynia - an extreme sensitivity to touch. Ninon has it so bad she drops out of school and isolates herself at home. This odd little book is Ninon's story from age 15 to 20, proving that doctors don't have all the answers.
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