What is illness? Is it a physiological malfunction or a social label? Is illness simply the absence of health? How do the physical, social and emotional worlds of a person change when they become ill? Can there be wellbeing within illness? Havi Carel addresses these questions by weaving together two perspectives on illness: her personal account of her own illness, and the abstract, philosophical account. Carel shows how we can view illness not simply as a localised biological dysfunction, but as a transformation of one"s body, one"s social, psychological and physical worlds, and one"s temporal existence. By focusing on the experience of illness as lived from within illness is reformulated as a life-changing event rather than a limited physiological problem. The body is no longer a lifeless container for the self, but the core of human subjectivity and embodied existence.