Conclusion - Convalescent Futures

Summary

I imagined the seed of this work in the aftermath of my own illness. Following a serious cancer diagnosis and a year of immunotherapy, I was designated NED, or “No Evidence of Disease,” a liminal category of recovery that, while the best outcome available, held none of the assurance of a complete cure. Eight years later, and thankfully no recurrences, today I remain NED, no less and no more. As I wrap up the writing of this book, however, the globe has been confronted with a new health crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic. While familiar cultural expectations surrounding quick recovery seemed ill-fitting to me as I emerged out of cancer treatment, the widespread physiological devastation of the coronavirus is prompting a much larger reckoning with received notions of the inherent value of speedy recovery. For one, whole cities and even nations have suspended routine activities for months in order to recover, gradually and collectively, from the pandemic. Moreover, preliminary evidence suggests that many survivors of COVID-19 will experience long-term recoveries and setbacks, as some patients continue to endure recurring symptoms for months on end. Thus as a whole culture, we are learning the bitter lesson, as the journalist Ed Yong phrased it, that “recovery is not a simple matter of flipping a switch.” Given this new cultural context, this project and its central questions seem even more pressing now than ever. Like the Victorians before us, we must decide: what should recovery look like in the face of modern stressors and diseases?