Thread by @HappyWarriorP

1 aspect of my body I'm not happy with is my terrible immune system

while I didn't officially become disabled until I was 18,
my quality of life often was effectively chronically ill growing up,

I catch everything, & when I get sick I stay sick for twice as long as others

For my teen years, I literally got pneumonia every year
Being always sick made keeping up with school really difficult, especially with my caring responsibilities

My grades struggled & until college I believed I had no intellectual potential at all

I bring this up to point out a major modern broken aspect of our medical system & the way American society approaches an illness,

Specific identified illnesses & diseases,
names & cures, societal false/true for claims of illness
#chronicpain #DisabilityTwitter #medtwitter

Think of work or school🤔
what do they say when U call in sick, go to the doctor for a note describing ur illness to prove Ur sick,

an idea that all maladies can be identified, & true sufferers will have clear identity markers of disease #chronicpain #illness #health #healthcare

.@DouthatNYT writes about this in his new book "Deep Places",

He points out modern medical system is made for people that easily fit into boxes of identification

& those sick w/ hard to diagnose or impossible to identify illness are labeled quacks
nytimes.com/2021/10/26/boo…

Prior to the 1940s & the rise of antibiotics,

A general understanding that U can be sick w/disease or have a disability that will never be identified,

the idea has limits, but I think its a better understanding of illness,
#medtwitter #health #healthcare
healthline.com/health-news/ma…

Many have experienced, myself included,
when U cant produce a name or PROOF of illness folks give U a side-eye & believe U to be exaggerating Ur condition

I think we need to relearn as a society the limits of our medical & scientific apparatus
nytimes.com/2021/11/06/opi… @DouthatNYT

Another great observation of @DouthatNYT is the limitations of our medical scholarly system when trying to deal with complex illnesses require multi-part treatments,

don't fit easily into double-blind studies, & therefore hard to move the scientific medical understanding forward

@DouthatNYT really great book & Im hoping I can get Ross for an interview w/ the Happy Warrior

It describes the chronically ill experience better than anyone

Cannot recommend it enough
amazon.com/Deep-Places-Me… #books #politics #healthcare #health #writing #news #BookTwitter

Honestly,
Deep Places is now one of my favorite disability books,

While I'm not a Lyme patient, so very much of Ross's experience lines up with my own

A really positive read I think everyone interested in these topics should probably take a gander at
webmd.com/arthritis/news…