Chronic illness story crosses boundaries

I’ll be honest, when I first watched this show, I didn’t really expect it to be something I’d write about.
“Kim’s Convenience” is a Canadian sitcom about a Korean-Canadian family dealing with the world around them. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed it from the start, but the most recent season actually gave me something to talk about that I could relate to.
See, season four ended with the mom, Mrs. Yong-Mi Kim being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
There’s certainly things in the rest of the series about working through family struggles, cultural differences both among the generations in an immigrant family as well as people around you and coming to accept others.
But this storyline throughout season five is what really connected with me as a person who grew up in a sick family and with my own chronic illnesses.
The show started as a play with the writer Ins Choi drawing inspiration from his own immigrant family. He wanted roles he could play as a Korean man.
I do appreciate the Korean culture and language shown throughout the show.
Jean Yoon, who plays Mrs. Kim, explained basically my point with this in a behind-the-scenes interview where she said, “It’s really important to have representation because people who don’t see themselves on screen start to feel invisible and their stories are not understood by others and it’s really easy to slide into this place where you just stop recognizing your own value.”
I can’t relate to the racial representation, but I think the writers and cast took just as much care with the MS storyline as they do with the racial topics.
Medical issues are another area that can be hard to do fairly and accurately in film, especially by people who don’t have a serious medical issue.
Mrs. Kim is a strong, proud and religious woman who is struggling to recognize what is happening to her body.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about the storyline until part way through season five when her daughter Janet is pushing her to attend an MS support group and she resists.
Part way through the episode, you find out that she is going, but she’s told the group Janet is the one with MS.
As somebody with a chronic illness, it can be easy to say “I don’t need help. I’m OK. I don’t need a support group.”
Some people really don’t need it and that’s great, but I think it’s also important to normalize these kinds of groups whether it’s for an illness, addiction, grief or a hobby.
Obviously, lying about something like that isn’t the right move, but it is understandable from such a private character. She doesn’t want to use the handicap parking pass because she doesn’t want people to know. Ultimately, she wants the support from this group, but she’s still scared of the label that comes with something like MS.
When Janet confronts her about lying, Mrs. Kim says she doesn’t understand and Janet’s response is “then help me.”
While this isn’t the most sensitive explanation, I think it’s a valid one that many people with a chronic illness can relate to.
“It’s just sometimes I feel like I have a big sticker on my face. At the grocery store, food is damaged and it get discount sticker. It feel nice to be in group of discount food, but also it feel bad to be in group of discount food. So, I pretend I don’t have MS and it make it easier to talk about.”
You feel broken at times, like you got the body made up of discount parts that just don’t seem to work right no matter what you do.
This week, I made an off-hand comment at the end of an interview about forgetting something. I was asked how old I am and I said I’m 24. The response was that I’m too young to have that issue.
I’ve had similar responses when I’ve said something about being in pain or being tired or having a hard time breathing.
All I can think is “yeah, I am too young for this,” but that doesn’t change it. (This is not to be passive aggressive to the person who said it. Honestly, I’m not offended. I just get tired of hearing it.)
My concern when any show goes down the road of a character having an illness is that it will go one of two ways: that becomes their entire character or something that should be chronic disappears in two episodes.
But, as somebody who’s lived through both chronic illness and people around me having a chronic illness, I think “Kim’s Convenience” deserves props here because they didn’t do either.
This didn’t become all of Mrs. Kim’s personality, but it wasn’t ignored either.
There’s simple things like her losing feelings in her hand or feeling like Jesus isn’t with her anymore or convincing her husband to go play tennis with her because “I want to play while I’m still strong enough to play.”
But she’s still working, cooking, being active in church and trying to care for her family. Fundamentally that’s what you do when you’re chronically ill, you find ways to power through because the world around you doesn’t stop. And you learn to take rests when you need to.
For a show that started out a desire for the writer to see himself in film, it does that and now for more than just racial issues.
Michael Shine is a contributing writer for the Daily American Republic.