There’s been a surge in online “medical professionals,” on TikTok and Instagram proclaiming that disorders like MCAS, POTS, EDS, etc, might actually be superpowers because they “let people sense toxins in the air,” that our ancient ancestors relied on.
What toxins? Never specified.
Relied upon how? Never elaborated.
Which I find is an odd way to describe allergic reactions to mold in your environment.
Like I get it. I’ve joked that back in the day, I’d be the village witch telling people not to settle the village so close to the willow trees because willow trees are notorious for causing houses built too close to them to rot and mold (not to mention the insects they can attract and the subsequent bacterial and viral illnesses that may follow) and I can seemingly smell mold a hell of a lot quicker than people without MCAS, but it’s not actually a superpower.
I didn’t “sense” shit. My throat closes up.
It’s not magic or “women’s intuition” or however the fuck some of them are phrasing it.
It’s a medical condition, one that is very hard to treat and one that doesn’t react solely to “toxins.” I’m allergic to my own god damn hormones, for Christ’s sake.
And while my genes have clearly made it this far, I have to imagine that most of my ancestors with the same gene defects just fucking died owed to the lack of auto-injector epinephrine and the countless other modern drugs that keep me alive.
(“Oh, but back in the day we were exposed to less toxins.” The Tudors used lead face paint to cover pockmarks. I’m going to go ahead and press X to doubt on that one. People like me just died. That’s why you didn’t hear so much about them.)
And maybe I’m being a hypocrite, but part of me sincerely feels like it’s one thing for people with the illness to joke about being the canaries in the coal mines of certain environments that could eventually make other people sick, but it’s another for “medical professionals” to try to turn around and label it a superpower when people are dying trying to access testing and care, and being labeled as hysterical and attention seeking in the interim.
But don’t worry, girly-pop, maybe if we do a rebrand and give your suffering some sort of purpose, maybe the temporarily abled will stop trying to kill you through malicious neglect.
That’s worked great for Autism and ADHD communities, right? …. Right?
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