Summary of Elissa Bassist's Hysterical

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 I’m a thirty-something Virgo, living in Brooklyn, and I love Joan Didion. I’m also a single, thirty-something Virgo, living in Brooklyn, and I love writing. I’d kept a journal for twenty-one years and had published a book about the last decade of my life. I’d been writing for comparison’s sake for most of my life. I’d graduated from journalism school decades ago, but like so many other female journalists had before me, I’d never been able to break out of the well. My first magazine job after college was at the Village Voice. My first freelance piece was published in the Washington City Paper. My first bylined feature was in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. It wasn’t until I was thirty-five that I finally got my big break: a two-part story on female athletes and eating disorders in Sports Illustrated—the first sports feature ever written by a woman with no ties to professional sports. In 2016, Sports Illustrated made a point of hiring more women than men and told me before they would do so that it was part of their strategy to diversify their staff.

#2 I had a headache that wouldn’t go away, and the doctors couldn’t diagnose it. It was a cluster headache, which is so rare that doctors don’t know how to treat them, and I went through a year of tests. I was still in pain, but it had spread to my right eye, which was dilated.

#3 A woman in pain is expected to answer pleasantly or exuberantly, with pain redacted. I hated to be insolent, but I was not better or getting better or feeling better. The allegation of better lost its significance to a person in a pain that no one else was in.

#4 I had a cluster headache, which is so rare that doctors don’t know how to treat them. It spread to my right eye, which was dilated. I was still in pain, but it had spread to my right breast.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Sep 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798350031119

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Insights on Elissa Bassist's Hysterical

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I had to watch as Casey Affleck, with a low man-bun, walked onstage and received the Oscar for Best Actor. I couldn’t read my street sign after that.

#2

I had a headache that would not go away. It was classified as a cluster headache, and the neurologists could not find the source of the pain. They tested my brain, my nerves, and my gut, but could not find the source.

#3

The neurologist conducted a nerve conduction velocity test, which tested the speed at which your nerves conduct electricity. The test stimulated nerves all over my body, like G-d stabbing Her fingernail into tangles of fibers until they smoked. I took triptans by self-injection and sedatives. I was not better or feeling better, but I was taking care of myself to relieve my pain.

#4

I had to have breast cancer and not worry about it for 31 days. I had to have a biopsy, and the radiologist said it would feel like being at the dentist. I was stone-cold sober for the procedure.

#5

The institution of medicine rarely acknowledges sex differences that appear in every human organ, tissue, and cell, and in most diseases.