Vernacular. It's a powerful thing. It also changes over time, evolving to fit the current generations' way of thinking and viewpoints. This is generally a good thing. In the chronic illness world, some words that were once commonly used to describe a person - like "handicapped" - have been replaced with words that are less stigmatizing or discriminatory. Another example is the push to use "adherence" rather than "compliance" when discussing a patient's following of a prescribed medical treatment as the medical community has moved, albeit kind of slowly, away from the patriarchal model of the physician-patient relationship. One term I still see pretty often, including in the medical research literature, is "suffers from." As in, patients who suffer from [insert disease name here]. There's no doubt that illness comes with periods of suffering. But is that the right way to describe the entire experience? An alternativ
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