In 1990, Newsweek covered the “strange affliction… generally known as chronic fatigue syndrome,” and deemed it “a major public-health concern.” Mainstream acknowledgment of the condition was a mixed blessing: Though the Newsweek article validated the experiences of afflicted people, it also helped popularize the term “yuppie flu,” which it called “a fashionable form of hypochondria.” “Yuppie flu” became a dismissive synonym for the illness that persisted for decades, driven by the mistaken belief that everyone who has ME/CFS is upper-middle class.
“Sick and Tired” was topical: It aired a year after researchers published the first working case definition for what was then known as chronic fatigue syndrome. ME/CFS is a disabling illness that causes concentration difficulties, muscle pain, and exhaustion, and affects up to 2.5 million people in the United States and 17 million people worldwide-most of them women. Dorothy eventually finds a neurologist who takes her symptoms seriously, and he soon diagnoses her with chronic fatigue syndrome, now known as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). When she explains to one doctor that she feels so worn out she can barely speak, he suggests that she’s just lonely and asks, “How’s your social life? Do you see men?” Another advises her to go on a cruise or bleach her hair. Rather than getting a diagnosis, however, she encounters only skepticism. Dorothy spends much of the two episodes going from one (male) doctor to another in search of an answer. On this day in 1989, NBC aired the first of a two-part episode of The Golden Girls titled “Sick and Tired,” in which Dorothy Zbornak (Bea Arthur) becomes so incapacitated by exhaustion, lack of stamina, and mental confusion that she has to give up her job as a substitute teacher. In a world where women’s health concerns are too often underdiagnosed and overlooked, with sometimes fatal consequences, September 23 marks a television milestone: the 30th anniversary of a small-screen portrayal of chronic illness that was as moving as it was revolutionary. The Golden Girls in all their glory (left): Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux, Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo, Beatrice Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak, Betty White as Rose Nylund (Photo credit: NBC)
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