Simply the Symptoms are gone, not the illness

Some people believe that when the symptoms of an illness go away the illness is cured.  This is an assumption that is often made, however I believe it is untrue.  My mom is a Neurology nurse at Saint Elizabeth’s (not the same hospital as Walter Freeman).  My family also watches a lot of medical TV shows like the House, Royal Pains and Gray’s Anatomy.  I am not obsessed with these shows like the rest of my family, but I still watch them occasionally (As a matter of fact one of the few times I watch Gray’s anatomy was yesterday).  I should not be basing my opinion off of TV shows because they are not always accurate, however that is what I am going to do.  In these shows symptoms of a disease going away occasionally means the person is cured, however in many cases the person gets worse when a symptom goes away.  I also know that in real life a person may seem like they are better and be released from the hospital, however they come back a short period of time (it may be days, weeks, even months) later suffering from the same exact symptoms as they did the first time.  If a person with a disease gets better for a period of time it does not mean that they would not have the same problem in the future.  Some diseases do not even show symptoms until they are too late.  A doctor or nurse may send a person home after their symptoms from a certain disease cease to exist at that moment in time; however that does not mean that the person who has the disease is cured of the disease for the rest of their life.  It means that the person is not showing the signs of the disease at the moment and doesn’t say if the disease is cured or not.