Why Zebras & Friends?

Chronically ill people are often referred to as “zebras” because they live with rare or hard-to-diagnose conditions. The expression comes from medicine, where doctors are trained to primarily consider the most common causes when diagnosing symptoms – “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras.” This means they usually first think of the most common diagnoses. As a result, people with rare diseases are often overlooked or misunderstood. They are the “zebras”: rare, unusual, and often not immediately recognizable. The term represents those whose conditions don’t fit the usual pattern and who are, therefore, frequently confronted with uncertainty and rejection.

In particular, those affected by Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome refer to themselves as zebras, as they often already have stretch marks at a young age (I’ve had mine since I was 13) – the zebra stripes. 😉