Nerve - by Erika Conrad-Wess (Hardcover)

About the Book

NERVE is the story of one woman's journey through chronic facial pain, medical trauma, and the search to reclaim identity, agency, and hope when a cure is no longer possible.

Book Synopsis

When Erika Conrad-Wess first developed sudden electric shocks of pain in her face, she assumed the problem would be temporary.

It wasn't.

Instead, the attacks marked the beginning of a decades-long struggle with trigeminal neuralgia and the permanent nerve damage that followed-one of the most severe chronic pain conditions known to medicine.

What followed was not just physical suffering, but a collision with a healthcare system often unequipped to recognize, treat, or even believe patients whose illnesses cannot be easily explained.

In NERVE, Erika chronicles her journey through failed procedures, medical trauma, misdiagnosis, and the psychological toll of living inside a body that no longer feels safe. As surgeries accumulate and hope repeatedly rises and collapses, she is forced to confront impossible questions:

What happens when cure is no longer attainable?

How do you build a meaningful life when pain becomes permanent?

And how do you hold onto your identity when the institutions meant to help you begin to fracture your trust?

Told with candor, dark wit, and hard-earned insight, NERVE is both a deeply personal memoir and a broader examination of chronic illness, patient advocacy, and the uneasy limits of modern medicine. It is a story about resilience-not the polished, inspirational kind. It is about adaptation, grief, endurance, and learning to move forward even when healing does not arrive in the form you hoped for.

NERVE offers an unflinching look at life inside chronic pain-and a reminder that even in the wreckage, meaning can still be made.

"An inspiring testament to fortitude and resilience."

-Mark E. Linskey, MD

Review Quotes

"An inspiring testament to fortitude and resilience."

- Mark E. Linskey, MD

Professor of Neurological Surgery, UC Irvine School of Medicine

"This book is about bearing the unbearable and discovering purpose when all seems lost."

- Richard A. "Red" Lawhern, PhD

Early praise for NERVE:

• "This book is so, so important. I saw me on every single page."
• "Took me a whole two days to read it because I obviously could not put it down."
• "Your book is not only an engaging read, but also a valuable resource for both medical professionals and patients-an inspiring guide to living with pain, reclaiming agency, and navigating the difficult yet transformative journey of self-discovery."
• "I want to buy about a dozen copies and give them to people I know in the medical field."