Many people with chronic illnesses experience different symptom sets worsening seasonally, including the October Slide.
For me, summer is often my most uncomfortable season. Heat and sunlight intolerances from many of my chronic conditions & their medications, plus seasonal increases to environmental triggers like VOC offgassing, create a miserable confluence.
The climate crisis is a health crisis, and their denials & minimizations are intertwined. Other vector-borne diseases, including [CW image of bug on human skin] diseases spread by ticks are expanding both seasonally and geographically. People with Chronic Lyme are kin to people with fibromyalgia, chronic pain, ME/CFS and long COVID in experiencing medical stigmatization and disbelief.
However, we are not powerless. Our communities offer skills, resiliency, and understanding.
That’s a lot of links! If you’re looking for my top pick, it’s A Chronically Ill Earth: COVID Organizing as a Model Climate Response in Los Angeles, from the Yale Global Health Review