The other day I was reading the reviews of Joan Didion's two books on grief. It seems she wrote them because having looked, she found there was not a book. Now there is: but on the loss of her daughter, in particular, the reviews seemed to suggest that she had found the limits of art. (So did the composer Leos Janacek in his opera about art and loss after the death of his daughter: the opera suggests that art is simply inadequate) There being a book doesn't always help. Sometimes specific advice, shared experience, talking to real people, is helpful regardless of if it does or not.

I've personally yet to find a book that discusses the kind of health problems I've experienced. Have never even come across anyone else with precisely the same issue, particularly at this severity. A male Greek philosopher probably doesn't know all that much about women's health: the kind of generalised life advice often found in philosophical books can just feel like a platitude to someone struggling with a specific issue. It's at best the equivalent of 'learn to live with it', which is much easier said or read than done. Even if the person knows there is no other option in living than to live with it, their conflict can remain in simply not wanting to, and hope is also not so easily extinguished.