Chronic Illnesses Are the Diseases of Our Time

The idea that an infection kind of can hit your body and should act the same way in everyone's bodies turns out to be, you know, maybe not quite right. The kinds of illness stories we like to tell are stories of tidy recovery, or even kind of spiritual dissolves that ends with death. We don't have a kind of gripping cultural narrative or easy way to talk about those conditions that recur and come and go.