Chronic Illness and Chronic Residence

One dimension of the suffering of chronic illness is being constrained to live in a location that makes one's illnesses worse. Because of a lack of money or the inability to find work elsewhere, many chronically ill people must live where the weather torments them.

For most folks, the weather is a matter small talk, but not of major concern (unless one is a farmer or similarly connected to land and weather). But if you suffer from chronic illness, a sudden weather change is dreaded and endured as a punishment unavoidable--unless you have hope of moving or taking a holiday.

But they cannot do that. Holidays are demanding in their own ways--ways that healthy people do not notice. Nor can they move to a healthy climate. They are imprisoned in two ways: in their sick bodies and in their inhospitable environment.

Let us lament this double incarceration.