Journalism on Illness

Reading these articles from The Washington Post and The New York Times, you would think that the most difficult thing about having Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS, is finding a diagnosis.  Once that happens, these articles imply, everything is uphill, on a path to full recovery.  The problem with this narrative trajectory, of course, is that POTS is a chronic illness, and the most difficult part of having POTS is having POTS - that is, living day to day with the symptoms.  By profiling one boy whose story has an atypically rapid happy ending (Patrick Fox from the Times article) and one boy whose story is crafted to fit the happy ending narrative (as is the case for Adam Hammerman), these articles seem uncomfortable with the fact that chronic illnesses are, well, chronic.  They might, as the Times article claims to do through Fox, raise awareness about POTS, but they're also perpetuating the expectation put on people with chronic illness to just get better, already.  Especially egregious in this respect is the Times article, quoting a Mayo doctor saying, "You have to make your mind rule your body."  If only it were as simple as that. 

I chose these articles because I'm interested in the representations of people with disabilities in the media.  The stories follow common trends in journalism on illness: either writing about a model case featuring a full recovery (sometimes accompanied by a triumphant "went on to play at Carnegie Hall" or "is now the captain of her high school soccer team"), which enforces the "overcoming your disability" idiocy, or slapping a happy ending onto something that is actually much more ambiguous because people are uncomfortable with that ambiguity.