Many Seasons in Hell (Part III)
**Errata: at 26:14 my dumb ass said 2,000 as the threshold under which a disease becomes a rare disease. I swear to God I was just extremely tired and I'm not actually that stupid, the real number is 200,000. A disease with less than 200,000 sufferers in the United States is considered a rare disease by the NIH. ME/CFS is far over that threshold. I have brain damage** Another season in hell: What does it mean to live, beyond survival, what does the flesh want, does biological matter have a telos? In the case that it does, what is the current telos of the damaged flesh, sludgy blood, and inflamed brains of the patients with these illnesses? And is there finally good news on the horizon for people with these illnesses? We delve into that tough question more than ever in this episode, I try to resist taking a blackpill on this issue, Brennan tries to prepare the antidote, and so on. Walker and Brennan (death__denial) start with a discussion of suicide as a non-psychiatric phenomenon ("rational" and informed by circumstances of living with a physical illness and the requisite pain and lost life/youth/work ability) rather than mood or any perceived psychiatric disorder which distorts thought. (study on that from Spanish source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8227525/) More than in past episodes we get into some of the novel scientific discoveries in these illnesses, as well as the ecology of the research funding systems. We discuss the mortality rates of post-infectious chronic diseases like ME/CFS and Long Covid, and the causes for the slightly increased mortality. But more importantly we discuss how mortality is a deceptive measure--especially when taken as a sole measure--for understanding the impact of these chronic illnesses, which cause devastating quality of life decreases. In this episode we tie together a lot of loose ends we've brought up earlier--personal experiences with the hellish nature of chronic illness, problems in chronic illness activism, allusions to how the wave of chronic illness in the wake of the pandemic may be the impetus for changes in research funding and scientific discoveries, and finally: whether there really is any hope at all for people with these illnesses (ME/CFS and Long Covid primarily). This is a shorter episode but potent, with great editing by Rene Joly, using original music samples made by friends of the podcast as well as from the pop/indie music Canon and my 2nd favorite anime, Yu Yu Hakusho.. All of the episodes in this series have selections and allusions from various philosophers/theorists on pain and death, such as Nietzsche, Woolf, Junger, Mishima, Klossowski etc… and some by anonymous authors and poets, too many to give credit to Sorry for the wait, and enjoy! https://www.statnews.com/2022/03/29/nih-long-covid-sluggish-study/ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21641846.2022.2062169?journalCode=rftg20
