Cured

Anne McTiernan begins her second memoir at age twenty-nine, soon after completing her doctoral training in public health research at the University of Washington. She and her husband are now parents to four-year-old and three-month-old girls. She realizes that jobs in her field are scarce, especially for women and decides she needs better credentials to land a job. Overcoming her fear and life-long struggle with inadequacy, Anne moves the family 3,000 miles to New York, where she begins medical school. Within a few months of starting this new life, Anne is in deep trouble. She cannot handle the competing demands and feels isolated. The stress builds, until Anne suffers a series of paralyzing panic attacks that threaten her ability to function. She begins psychotherapy and starts on a journey of self-discovery, realizing she has to change to survive. Cured is the follow-up to her 2016 release Starved and differs from other physician memoirs in its themes of motherhood, mental illness, and the perspective of a female physician on how she turned adversity into a strength and set of skills.