Do academics and medical professionals get sick? Of course. Are they consistent in expecting that the experience will not impact their ideal of objectivity? Perhaps, but most likely they will bring their objectivity-based skills as academics and medical professionals to study their own illness. This collection of 47 narratives gives readers a cross-section of disciplines and conditions and how they relate to each other in terms of identity, concealment, agency and advocacy and medicine at the margins. Topics include the interplay between well children and sick parents, relations with ill children and spouses as well as extended family, dual identities as health care professionals and family members, "coming out" as different, sexuality, body image, gender, the many meanings of "invalid," self-advocacy and political activism. Language and healing, the indeterminacy of illness, the concept of time made strange, and the liminal spaces of race, ethnicity and culture. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)