Entangled Illnesses: Embodied Experiences of Managing Multimorbidity

Multimorbidity, meaning multiple long-term conditions impacting a person's health, has become a rising societal and public health issue. The article contributes to the sociological study of chronic illness and multimorbidity by analysing how the blurriness of illnesses and entanglement of symptoms in multimorbidity is experienced and negotiated by people with coexisting chronic conditions. Drawing on qualitative interviews with people who live with endometriosis, fibromyalgia or hormonal migraine in Finland, we show how people with multiple chronic conditions distinguish between evolving symptoms based on past embodied experiences to make decisions about how to best manage their health. We argue that coexisting illnesses become entangled in ambiguous and open-ended ways, which, if left unaddressed, complicates treatment. Our analysis of illness experiences is aligned with the growing body of literature that argues that the single-disease model underlying healthcare systems fails to address the needs of patients living with multiple chronic conditions. Our emphasis on evolving entanglements between illnesses and the blurriness of conditions makes visible crucial discrepancies between lived illness and existing biomedical models and healthcare structures.