My sister had cancer for about six years (age 14 to 21). She was treated in top hospitals in Monterrey and Houston as well as integrative places in Tijuana and Hamburg. She ate vegan, no sugar, daily green tea, etc and later had bone broth and local shamanic potions. (1/x) Family members brought over statuettes of saints and a traveling 'virgen de los remedios'. She had Reiki and other forms of energy healing. She was always gracious about those things, though we did have instructions... (2/x)

So many people are so attached to the malingerer narrative. In a BBC 2013 “Great Lives” podcast on Florence Nightingale the museum professional who chose her describes the statistician and sanitary reformer as “someone who it seems to me almost revels in her suffering’ (1/x) Mark Bostridge, who wrote the 2008 Nightingale biography responds (bless him), “I think that’s unfair, because she was seriously ill and for decades historians and biographers portrayed Nightingale as a malingerer…” (2/x)