Abide

Moribund

From Susan Griffin, What Her Body Thought:

Though my illness is not often terminal, it has a moribund quality. Each day when I would slide into the downward spiral of my symptoms, I felt as if I were suspended at the edge of death. As if I were perpetually dying.

Pain

From Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.

Illness

From Susan Sontag, Illness As Metaphor, preface (1978)

Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.