The Man Who Couldn T Eat Chapter Summary

Jon Reiner, a man who has been to hell and back. His life could quite possibly be labeled as a “series of unfortunate events”. The Man Who Couldn’t Eat revolves around the unsatisfying life of Jon Reiner. A man who has lived a life of diet, unsatisfactory cravings, and non-refundable trips to the bathroom.

Jon Reiner’s autobiographical novel tells a story about a time-stricken event that had happened in his adult life. Reiner has lived with a disease known as Crohn's disease. Crohn’s disease is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease that affects the lining of the digestive tract.
The novel begins as Reiner is close to death on the floor, screaming for help. As he lays on the floor waiting for help, he recounts his childhood. At a young age Reiner had discovered that he had developed Crohn's disease and that he had experienced diarrhea in school due to eating a colossal amount of apricots. As he lays on the ground, he says “I didn’t eat a single apricot”. This goes back to how, as a child, he knows what not to eat. Reiner is questioning what is happening to him at the time of the event and doesn’t understand how things have went wrong when he follows the same regiment every day.
Reiner expresses that there are physicians who are SOBs and FOBs. The term SOB’s is considered a compliment. SOB stands for side-of-the-bed and this depicts the physicians who approach the patient’s, touch the patients, and form a human bond with the patients. As Reiner notes, the SOB physicians are better clinicians and pay attention to the whole patient. FOB’s are physicians who who stay at the foot-of-the-bed. These physicians lack the empathy towards a patient. These physicians are in the room taking tests and reading charts, but are not considering the patient's input. Reiner writes, “I often know my body’s health intuitively and more insightfully than a dye scan”. As Reiner explains, FOBs are a “mess of bad