when the world assumes wellness

By 1932, the historian Henry E. Sigerist had noted that medicine’s systemizing impulses were “no longer concerned with man but with disease,” as Anderson and Mackay point out.

But here’s the problem with modernity. We live in a time where we are surrounded by stressors. Right now, I have 56 emails in my inbox that need my attention. My body is responding to that with stress (this body of ours is also not great at knowing the difference between life-and-death stressors and the kinds of stressors that won’t kill me). My un

To the degree that my quest had an object, that object turned out to be learning to live with uncertainty and incapacity.

something like autoimmune disease or long COVID falls into the third category of illness; it combines biology and biography in ways that are difficult for most of us (whether scientists or laypeople) to conceptualize.

I watched the lives of others with a sense of wistfulness. I missed the burn of Scotch in my throat, the loose joy of a dinner party where everyone got a little high on talk. I wanted to be sloppy and fun again. “How are you doing?” Gina asked one morning. “I don’t know if I can take this anymore,” I told her. “I just want to get better. I want to

our medical system, for all its extraordinary capabilities, is ill-equipped to handle the steep rise in this kind of chronic illness. That system is great at providing acute care and terrible at managing the complexities of long-term care.

Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place. —Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor