Somewhere in the last year or so the spouse of a friend of mine had a heart attack. I see her a few times a year on Zoom calls and if the stars align when I pass through the town where she lives, which has happened less frequently in recent years. She didn't really make a big deal of it on one Zoom, so when she referred back to it in passing in a subsequent call I was a little surprised, which admittedly was my bad.
In retrospect, I think it's rather exemplary. As we age we will all be passing through medical crises of various sorts and we have the option of being more or less transparent about them. The more one calls attention to one's own medical crises and those of one's family, the more one creates reporting relationships to the rest of the world: they expect to be updated regularly, which becomes a burden. Hence the popularity of such sites as CaringBridge which allow people to send out updates to targeted audiences of friends and family.
When friends get together they don't want to get dragged down into all of that. We all know things get hard. It's part of the deal with life. Getting involved in a competitive cycle of my woes are worse than your woes is no fun for anyone.
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