Can We Stop Auditioning for "Guess My Weight"?
Dear Stranger, My Body Isn’t a Before-and-After Photo. Somewhere along the way, society decided that the most exciting thing about a chronically ill person is… their weight. Not their courage. Not the fact that they got out of bed after sleeping like a rotisserie chicken all night because every joint had a different opinion. Not that they smiled through pain that would make a healthy person cancel every plan for a week. No. It’s always… “You’ve lost weight!” As if my body is competing in a reality show called Keeping Up with the Inflammation. Here’s the tea. Yes, I was on Ozempic. For one month. One. Tiny. Month. Nearly two years ago. That chapter ended long before my doctors found the treatment that finally convinced my immune system to stop acting like an overdramatic theatre kid who thinks every healthy cell deserves a standing ovation… before attacking it. Autoimmune diseases are strange little poets. They write their verses in swollen joints. Their punctuation is fatigue. The...