The Cost of Ulcerative Colitis

Read Larissa MacFarquhar’s New Yorker profile of Aaron Swartz, if you haven’t. In it you’ll learn that Swartz had ulcerative colitis, the chronic (and expensive) disease that Hayley Judd wrote about for us last month.

John Jackson also has U.C., and discovering Swartz had it too inspired him to “come out” about his diagnosis. He doesn’t mention financials, but his disclosures about the physical and mental effects of the disease and its treatment are harrowing (“There is no hard and fast rule for what will cause a flare-up, but one thing I am certain about: the pain of hunger is better than the pain of U.C. and so it is not uncommon for me to go an entire day without eating”).

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