Absurdity
Friend Tells Woman With Lifelong Disease To Feel Better Soon
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
COLUMBUS, OH. Marissa Kowalski, who was diagnosed with lupus at age 19 and will have lupus until she dies, received a touching message of support Tuesday from her close friend Dana Pellegrini, who wished her a speedy and full recovery.
The text, timestamped 2:14 p.m., read: "Thinking of you girl!! Hope you feel better soon!! You've got this!!" It included three pink heart emojis and a flexed bicep, suggesting Dana believes lupus is the kind of thing you power through with a positive attitude and perhaps some Gatorade.
Kowalski, who has spent the last twelve years managing joint inflammation, fatigue, organ complications, and a medication schedule that would challenge a hospital pharmacist, described receiving the message as "sweet" and "exhausting in a completely different way than the disease."
"Dana means well," Kowalski told reporters, staring at a middle distance that suggested she has explained this before. "She's a good person. She just thinks chronic means it's been going on for a while and that soon it won't be."
Pellegrini, reached for comment, said she was "pretty sure" Marissa had been sick long enough by now and that her body should "probably be done with it." She also suggested Marissa try cutting out gluten, getting more sunlight, and looking into a supplement she saw on a podcast hosted by a man who is not a doctor and has never claimed to be.
"I just feel like if you really commit to healing," Pellegrini said, before the interview was terminated at the request of this reporter's own conscience.
Pellegrini is not alone. According to a study that does not exist but absolutely should, approximately 94 percent of people with chronic illness have received the phrase "hope you feel better soon" from someone who interprets a lifelong autoimmune condition as roughly equivalent to a bad cold that has simply gone on too long.
The medical community has a term for this. It is not printable.
Dr. Alan Forsythe, a rheumatologist at Ohio State Medical Center who has spent thirty years treating patients with lupus, fibromyalgia, MS, and related conditions, described the social landscape around chronic illness as "a fascinating study in how much people will project their own comfort onto someone else's suffering."
"The phrase 'feel better soon' is not really for the patient," Dr. Forsythe said. "It is for the person saying it. It closes the loop. It lets them go back to not thinking about it."
Kowalski said she usually just replies "thanks" because the alternative is a forty-minute explanation that she does not have the energy for, which is ironic, she noted, because the illness is precisely why she does not have the energy for it.
On Friday, four days after the initial text, Pellegrini followed up to ask if Marissa was "all healed up" and whether she wanted to go hiking.
Kowalski is considering her response.
She has been considering it for three days.
The story we are making fun of: https://reductress.com/post/hope-youre-feeling-better-says-friend-who-doesnt-understand-what-chronic-illness-means/