When reading The Undying I was struck by the way Boyer’s writing is so personal and so dehumanizing. That is to say, she takes the reader on the journey of her illness with her, allowing them to experience events as she does. The reader gets to hear her internal thoughts, but they are never overly emotional. She writes with a kind of dry tone that reminds me of Carmel, and it works really well with the everyday-ness of what she writes about. The dehumanizing aspect of medicine is made very clear by the way Boyer describes her treatment. She is constantly being poked, prodded and quantitatively evaluated as if her caregivers do not even see her as a human being. This is made obvious when she describes a cancer patient’s name and birthdate as equivalent to a barcode. This lack of empathy displayed by the medical world made me really upset as they are supposed to be people you can turn to when there is nowhere left to go, or at least in an ideal world. This is highlighted by the way Boyer describes the medicine she is given. Drugs people typically describe as “miracles” and “lifesavers” she describes as honestly as possible- poison. Despite all of the pain and suffering throughout this book, there is a courageousness to these women that can only be seen as admirable. One instance that stuck out for me was the story about Fanny Burney’s unanesthetized mastectomy was undeniably hard to read, but extremely inspiring.