SEATTLE – While many citizens of the United States celebrate the end of the presidency of Donald Trump, one woman is in the unfortunate position of realizing the tenseness she’s been experiencing for the last four years was the only thing holding her body together.
“I saw the news on my phone that the election had finally been called for Joe Biden and the relief I felt was enormous,” said Sheila Decker, a 34-year-old teacher and mother of two. “Knowing Biden was elected president, it was like a giant weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Then an actual weight was lifted off my shoulders as my head tumbled right off.”
Decker suffers from Acute Stress Syndrome, an increasingly common ailment where the human body becomes so accustomed to the stress of authoritarian politicians, the climate crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, and the thought of all those Avatar sequels that when one of those stressors is removed, however temporarily, the body literally starts to disintegrate.
“Luckily for most sufferers of ASS, the stress of body parts falling off triggers enough new stress to stop their body parts from continuing to fall off,” said Dr. Judith Kynes, an ASS expert. “In Ms. Decker’s case, we were able to successfully revive and reattach her head after we explained to her how much the procedure would cost. Ironically, if she’d been in a country with universal healthcare, she wouldn’t have survived.”
Decker is expected to make a full recovery as long as she sticks to a strict regime of self-uncare, which includes at least eight hours a day of doomscrolling, hatewatching, and denying herself even a moment of joy or relief by constantly remembering every reason why the United States and the rest of the world is probably still royally fucked.
