I Hurt So Hard It Laughed: More or less the best of Duncan Cross, 2008 - 2015

In seven years of blogging, Duncan Cross's posts ranged far and wide across the healthcare landscape. The essays in I Hurt So Hard It Laughed range from the symptoms and side effects of his illness, to the social and romantic challenges of hiding a disease, to the politics and advocacy of disability. Cross is raw and real throughout, showing an unvarnished glimpse of life with chronic illness.

In his personal essays - about his life and experiences - Cross is frank and honest, showing himself as a creature and casualty of modern medicine. Readers learn not just what it's like to have a disease, but what it means to have an illness - to live day-to-day with pain and sickness and looming mortality. Far from being sappy or sad, Cross's essays share his determination to make his life meaningful, on his own terms.

In his political essays, Cross takes on the problem of healthcare reform, arguing that our system must do a better job of taking care of sick people, especially those with chronic illness. Against the half-truths and exaggerations in that debate, Cross shows what it means to be sick, to need healthcare yet be trapped in the dysfunction of the American system.

In defending the lives and rights of the chronically ill, Cross gives no quarter and suffers no fools. Wielding an allergy to bullsh-- so severe they give him a red bracelet, Cross takes aim at hypocritical doctors, delusional politicians, puffed-up celebrities, and others who don't or won't care about sick and disabled people. In the essays here, he turns his gaze to Paul Ryan, Lance Armstrong, "Breaking Bad", Tig Notaro, and others, and argues forcefully for the rightful place of sick people in public and popular culture.

I Hurt So Hard It Laughed is essential reading for anyone who is sick, anyone who wants to better understand what it means to be sick, and anyone wishing to grasp the patient's perspective in health care in the 21st humor.

Topics in I Hurt So Hard include: "Greatest Hits of All Time"; "Oversharing"; "Pro-tips For The Damned"; "Awareness: Weak"; "The Fight For Rights"; "Which Doctors"; "Pills And Bills"; "Politicians And Other Scoundrels"; "Poop Culture"; plus more than a dozen original short humor pieces -- including one never before published.