In order to live, we tell ourselves stories that do not include illness. Our heroes die on the battlefield, not from chronic pain. Diarrhea never makes its way into myth. Tragedies are devoid of menstrual cramps. Irritable bowel syndrome is, oddly, absent from the suspense genre. Suffering is purposeful, glorious, noble, deserved, punitive—Ajax falls on his sword, Juliet drinks the poison, Jane Eyre is undone by fire, Prometheus pays for his transgression with his liver. It is not caused by the terrestrial inconveniences of co-pays, misdiagnoses, long lines at the pharmacy, the vanishing of
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