Health Anxiety, Chronic Illness and Online Misinformation Cost One Woman Her Life
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What is the true story behind the book 'Wormhole'?
This is an R Media podcast.
Marie Claire presents You're Gonna Want to Hear This.
If there's somebody in your life that is suffering from a mysterious or chronic illness and going down a dark path, stay connected to them, listen to them, validate them. And that's the first step to ensuring they don't walk off in the dark, really.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to You're Going to Want to Hear This, the Marie Claire podcast where smart conversations are always in style. Now, today's guest is writer Hannah McIlhinney, whose new book called Wormhole begins with a family tragedy. For most of her life, Hannah's cousin, who was called Lauren, was searching for answers. She was cycling through specialists and treatments for years, desperately trying to understand what was happening inside her body. Eventually, she became convinced that she had chronic Lyme disease, and as her trust in conventional medicine eroded, she turned to alternative practitioners who promised answers that others hadn't. In October 2022, when she was just 27 years old, Lauren travelled alone to Malaysia for an alternative treatment called hypothermia therapy.
Her family had no idea that she was gone, and days later, Lauren was in a coma all alone in Malaysia. She never woke up, and she never went home. What followed sent Hannah searching for answers about Lauren's illness, the practitioners who treated her, and a healthcare system that too often leaves people with chronic conditions feeling dismissed and unheard. But the book asks something deeper too. In a culture obsessed with wellness and optimization, and you all know what I'm talking about, what happens when someone you love disappears down the wormhole? This is Hannah McElhinney, and you're going to want to hear this. Well, thank you so much for doing this interview. I really appreciate it. And congratulations on the book.
It's incredible. It's just there's so much in it. I imagine it was just such a big undertaking.
Yeah, thank you so much. I'm really happy with it.
So Hannah, earlier in the book, you described Lauren as someone who had spent more than half her life searching for answers to debilitating symptoms. How much of her journey do you think was driven by desperation? And how much was driven by a healthcare system that repeatedly failed to give her answers?
Oh, it's a really fine line. In the early days, it was definitely an issue with a healthcare system that splinters into specializations where medical professionals, physicians often stay within their lane. And there's a whole host of reasons for that. But I think once that happens and it becomes very difficult to find answers. For Lauren, it was really a sense of as her symptoms would change and she would kind of ricochet around to different health professionals, that's when the desperation starts to set in. You sort of lose trust with this healthcare system that in Australia we really put on a pedestal for many good reasons. But when she really lost trust in that, that's when desperation set in and things became quite dangerous.
So Lauren had spoken a lot about having this procedure called ozone therapy. And that procedure is a very controversial procedure where your blood is taken out, exposed to ozone, which is a highly potent or toxic form of oxygen gas, and then put back in to the body. And it's supposed to have a range of benefits, none of which have been proven to have any merit, but she really, really wanted to get that treatment. She wanted to fly to Cyprus to have it done, which is a lot of people will go to Cyprus. And yeah, our family kind of spoke about it as blood boiling, as a sort of shorthand, which I think we regret doing.
So she's traveled to Malaysia and your dad gets a call that she's in
emergency she's in a coma yes what happened what unraveled from there so dad gets a call from his sister my auntie Susan um and that's because a man um that nobody knew no one in my family knew uh reached out on Facebook messenger to my other cousin Lauren's sister Brianna and
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the true story behind the book 'Wormhole'?
0:02–5:42
2
How did Lauren's chronic illness journey begin?
5:42–6:17
3
Why are people with chronic illnesses vulnerable to misinformation?
6:17–9:36
4
What role do online communities play in promoting alternative treatments?
9:36–16:25
5
What are the dangers associated with unregulated medical treatments?
16:25–33:13
6
How does health anxiety intertwine with OCD and chronic symptoms?
33:13–45:25
7
What insights can we gain from Lauren's experiences with healthcare?
45:25–50:55
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from You’re Gonna Want To Hear This
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