One of my favorite web-comics is called PVP, which stands for Player Vs. Player. It’s a great comic created by Scott Kurtz and it’s the only web comic I read with any regularity.

The strip posted today, It’s Never Lupus, really annoyed me. One of the main characters, Brent, was recently injured in a company paintball game, when his fiancee, Jade, shot him in the nipple. Normally, I would consider this worth a chuckle; however, when he is taken to the emergency room, his doctor says,

At first we thought it was lupus.

Yeah, now that’s funny.

I don’t blame Kurtz in any way. I still think he’s hilarious, and I will certainly continue to read PVP just like I continue to watch the television program that started this running gag. The writers and producers of House placed lupus into pop culture, not as a life threatening illness that screws with my family’s life each day, but rather as a funny diagnosis that’s never quite accurate. It’s never lupus, right? It’s always some real disease. A disease that everyone understands. A disease that plays by the rules.

Well, sometimes it is lupus, and it really sucks.