Most people, when they hear the disease name, it's all they know about it. It sounds so mild. When I first was sick, for the first 10 years or so, I was dismissed. I was ridiculed and told I was lazy. It was a joke.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.
When you're used to being in the public eye, if you've got a disease, you've got to own up to it. It's about being about it, not running from it.
The generality have considered that disease is but a confused and disordered effort in Nature, thrown down from her proper state, and defending herself in vain.
Where I live, in Vermont, there's this thing that women know about men, which is this disease: their childhood was so idyllic that nothing in the rest of their life can ever be satisfying. It's almost a plague.
As a child, I had a serious illness that lasted for two years or more. I have vague recollections of this illness and of my being carried about a great deal. I was known as the 'sick one.' Whether this illness gave me a twist away from ordinary paths, I don't know; but it is possible.
It's far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has.
People who are sick, or who have been sick, or have come close to death have a lot to say - and they want you to hear it.
There's something universal about illness... Whether you like it, at some level all patients are saying, 'Daddy, Mommy, help me, tell me it's going to be alright.'
An eating disorder is serious and it's a disease, and I don't think you can lightly say that someone has a disease unless they're openly telling you that they do.
I still have in my memory, almost agonizing impressions of a serious illness which I had when I was about eight years old. Those about me called it scarlet fever, and its very name seemed to have a diabolical quality.