Where a disease was once hidden by silence, it is now buried under a flood of awareness campaigns, stories and slogans. The task is no longer to speak up but to resist the deafening noise that drowns out what the sick actually experience.
A dread disease can wipe out the particular, specific person who has it, turning them into a generic patient. This erasure runs deeper for those already partly unseen, such as women, and deeper still when class, race or disability are added.
Some medical 'choices' are choices only in name. Accepting a brutal treatment can be like choosing to jump off a building when someone is holding a gun to your head.
What passes for care can drain the sick of their remaining energy: patients are pushed out of recovery early, told they are fine when they are not, and expected to keep working through treatment. The system's efficiency is paid for with the patient's exhaustion.
Medical routine and social custom isolate the sick, turning each illness into a lonely private story of suffering or redemption. Seeing one's own case as part of a shared condition makes room for collective action against the causes of illness in the wider world.