Let’s be real for a minute:
Derick Dillard does not look like a healthy dude.
Appearances aren’t everything, of course, and beneath all that alarming weight loss, he might be as healthy as a horse.
(As healthy as a horse who is healthy, to be clear, and not a horse who, say, up and moved to Central America and then suddenly started losing most of his weight and some of his hair.)
But, as we can see in the new trailer for Season 3 of Counting On, it looks like Derick’s got nothing on that horse after all.
Something is wrong with him, that’s what we’re getting at. And he and his wife, Jill Duggar, are finally admitting it after months of rumors and speculation.
About time, right?
In the trailer, amidst all the rest of the Duggar family shenanigans, the 27-year-old Derick is seen going for a run …
He and Jill had just returned home to Arkansas after spending some time living in El Salvador for their extended missionary trip, as we know.
Sounds like he was excited to get back to his routine.
"It feels great to be home and run like I used to," the father of Jill’s son Israel is heard saying, "but it is difficult sometimes."
And "difficult" seems to be a little bit of an understatement, because then Derick is shown hacking up a lung, maybe even literally, as he tries to run.
It’s pretty gross, honestly, but it’s even more worrisome … it just doesn’t sound normal, not even a little bit.
As Jill explains, running "makes him feel gaggy, is what we say."
Again, we’re going to have to question that word usage, because "gaggy" sounds kind of cute and minor, and neither of those things describe Derick’s hacking fit.
Nevertheless, Derick admits that he is "excited to talk to the doctor about what he thinks might be going on."
We even see a bit of footage of Derick visiting that doctor, who pokes and prods around his throat to try to get to the bottom of this mystery.
Does that horrific hacking have anything to do with the weight loss?
It’s hard to say, we’re not doctors.
But we suppose it could, and at any rate, getting that boy in to see a doctor for whatever reason can only be a good thing.
It also feels worth noting that if all the Duggars’ segments are filmed around the same time, then you can make the following assumption:
Derick’s health woes would’ve been filmed more or less when Jill made that lame attempt to quiet the concern about his gaunt appearance.
In an interview published in November, the expectant mother stated that "Derick and I are generally very healthy people."
Tell that to his lungs, girlfriend.
"But when you’re eating, drinking and living in a different place than the one you grew up in," she went on, "it’s not uncommon" to suffer setbacks.
By that, she means "come down with the ‘traveler’s stuff’ or other bacteria/viruses in the local jungle area."
Jill helpfully added that "We haven’t had Zika that we know of."
That too is an especially interesting statement, since we now know that she was pregnant when she said this.
"Both of us have been laid out for a few days here and there, thankfully not both at the same time though," she added.
Hopefully Derick is getting whatever it is that’s going on with him sorted out … and hopefully Jill learns how to make a good statement, too.
Hope against hope, y’all. Hope against hope.
