The summer before my sophomore year of high school, I was diagnosed with Ulcerative colitis. After nearly two weeks of multiple failed medications, I underwent emergency surgery to have most of my large intestine removed. In total, I was in the hospital for 23 days. Surprisingly, I didn’t fall in love. I didn’t meet a gorgeous boy who shared my diagnosis. I didn’t meet my soulmate. What a waste of time.
Since the release of John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars” in 2012, which was later adapted into a major motion picture in 2014, the young adult world has been obsessed with a very interesting subgenre: chronic and terminal illness love stories. These stories usually follow a similar plot structure: boy and girl meet at a hospital or illness support group or other “sick person” location, boy and girl fall in love, boy or girl (or secondary character) dies, the audience learns something about life and love, the end.
A couple of weeks ago, a new sick kid romance hit the big screen. “Five Feet Apart,” starring Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson, focuses on two cystic fibrosis patients. I haven’t seen the film yet, but reviews were pretty good, with most CF patients split between being grateful for the awareness that the film brought and being frustrated by the glamorization of the less than glamorous disease.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m just as much a sucker for a tear-jerking teen romance as the next college-aged hopeless romantic, but as a chronic illness patient, I’m a little more weary of the glamorization of chronic and terminal illness. In many of these movies, the ill characters are shown going on dates, taking exotic trips and having the time of their lives. Of course, chronic and terminal illness patients can live happy lives, but the movies seem to gloss over the countless tests, procedures and surgeries endured by these patients.
It’s easy to get caught up in the “magic” of these films. I know I’ve caught myself thinking, Wow, they are so lucky to have found love. What a lovely silver lining in a bad situation. But how dare I, someone who has never had cancer or CF or whatever terminal illness, assume that any positive could outweigh the pain and suffering endured by these patients. These stories start to get toxic when people assume they are anything else but a story. No two patients experience illness the same way, and it is damaging to assume that how an illness is portrayed in a fiction book or film is the typical case.
However, these films, when viewed solely for entertainment purposes, do more good than harm. Before “Five Feet Apart”, few people had heard of cystic fibrosis, let alone knew anything about the disease. Awareness and education are the cornerstones of finding cures for chronic and terminal conditions, and major motion pictures do an excellent job of piquing the public’s interest about these otherwise unknown diseases.
So, next time you ugly cry in a movie theater because a main character died of cancer, remember that no two hour movie can justly portray the hardships endured by a terminal illness patient. After you finish sobbing, take a few minutes to look up the condition and learn a little about what it’s like to live like you’re dying. No two humans have identical lived experiences, and it is impossible to know how someone feels. So enjoy the movies, laugh, cry, take it all in, but remember: a fictitious movie does not reflect the experiences of real life. If you truly want to know how someone with a chronic or terminal illness lives, just ask them. Not everyone is willing to talk openly about their struggles, but it’s better to ask than assume that we’ve all fallen in love with the boy in the hospital room across the hall.