“For the chronically ill, details are all. To cope with chronic illness means to routinely scan minute bodily processes. Attention is vigilantly focused, sometimes hour by hour, to the specifics of circumstances and events that could be potential sources of worsening. There is the daily quest for control of the known provoking agents. Enervating decisions must be made about when to initiate or terminate an activity, when to move from baseline medication to second-level drugs, and when to seek professional help. And all this occurs in the context of active lives that are filled with the same pressures, threats, vagaries, and exultations that make of normal living such a ‘blooming, buzzing confusion’ [James] Is it any wonder that exhaustion is one of the common shared experiences of chronic illness?”
–Arthur Kleinman, The Illness Narratives
