Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee Allabest. Every year on my birthday since about fourth grade,

when my birthday cake is brought out and I blow out my birthday candles, I have thought I wish for my mom to get better.

All these years later, that's still what I wish for every single year. My mom has dealt with

chronic pain for her entire life. And there were some years as I was growing up that she was

in bed with the lights out with a violent migraine for half of the week every single week.

And she's also suffered from back pain, jaw pain and stomach pain, among a lot of other things.

And her doctor's inability to help her, despite their best efforts, was a huge source of

discussion and anguish in my house as I was growing up. So when I heard the title, Unwell Women,

I knew that this was a book that I needed to read and that we needed to add to our reading list. And then I knew immediately who I wanted

to read it with me. And that's Cassie Christensen from my master's program. So I'm super excited to be

discussing this book and to welcome Cassie to our show today. Welcome, Cassie.

Thank you, Amy. It's really a pleasure to be here. And what a touching story about your mother.

Yeah, it's sad. I was actually just at her house this morning and she, yeah, her whole entire life. She's just suffered with chronic pain and it's gone

up and down from time to time but it's really really bad right now and she's she's not even elderly

yet i mean the severe severe back stuff and the head stuff started when i was little when she was

young so it's it's been really hard. So this book

really meant a lot to me. Well, just to introduce listeners to you, Cassie, we met, like I said,

in our master's program and we met in that famous class now, because I've mentioned it so many times

on many different episodes on the podcast. It was the class on international women's health

and human

rights taught by Anne Firth Murray. And I so appreciated all of your comments in that class,

Cassie, you, I think you were the only one in the class that worked in the field of health care,

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