#illness

It's not easy to diagnose because depending where the endometrial deposits are, the symptoms can be quite different. It's an unrecognized problem among teenage girls, and it's something that every young woman who has painful menstruation should be aware of ... it's a condition that is curable if it's caught early. If not, if it's allowed to run on, it can cause infertility, and it can really mess up your life. [Author Hilary Mantel on being asked about being a writer with endometriosis, Nov 2012 NPR interview] ↗

— Hilary Mantel

#chronic-pain #endometriosis #feminism #feminist #healthcare

...if in the heat of the dispute he insists and asks, 'Am I not the master of throwing myself out of the window?' I shall answer him, no; that whilst he preserves his reason there is no probability that the desire of proving his free agency, will become a motive sufficiently powerful to make him sacrifice his life to the attempt: if, notwithstanding this, to prove he is a free agent, he should actually precipitate himself from the window, it would not be a sufficient warranty to conclude he acted freely, but rather that it was the violence of his temperament which spurred him on to this folly. Madness is a state, that depends upon the heat of the blood, not upon the will. A fanatic or a hero, braves death as necessarily as a more phlegmatic man or a coward flies from it. ↗

— Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach

#free-will #madness #mental-illness #death

...the story of the young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems like a poem. This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. "I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard," she told me. "In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, "This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness." Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. "Yes." What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here-I am here-I am life, eternal life. ↗

— Viktor E. Frankl

#fate #friendship #illness #life #loneliness

In my opinion, our health care system has failed when a doctor fails to treat an illness that is treatable. ↗

— Kevin Alan Lee

#government #health-care #health-care-system #humanism #medical

Say the word. Say the word and I won't go. Say the word, Qhuinn. Do it and I'll spend the night with you. Better yet, why don't you just kiss me- ↗

— J.R. Ward

#qhuinn #illness

The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or hunger. ↗

— Fidel Castro

#ignorance #illness #oppression #poverty #war

I know how devastated you must be to miss me, but leave a message, and I'll try to ease your agony ↗

— Richelle Mead

#illness

I don't go out with strangers," I said. "Good thing I do. I'll pick you up at five. ↗

— Becca Fitzpatrick

#illness

Don't bother her, don't try to talk to her, don't even look at her, or I'll fold you in half so many times you'll look like a tiny little origami werewolf. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#isabelle-lightwood #illness

I'll always choose you." Yes that was the word. "Every single lifetime, I'll choose you. Just as you have always chosen me. Forever. ↗

— Lauren Kate

#illness