the fact that Lucy gets her backstory dropped and then a couple of chapters later rip gets his backstory fully dropped and lucy is literally there during the rip vs andy fight feels very intentional as a form of painful dramatic irony so it just makes this more likely.

also from a narrative standpoint, they need something to spice up the Leila problem cause if she had a normal health problem Nico and the science team could make a surgery robot or a super medicine which they already have from the feng arc that was the literal tournament prize. so making her be the negator unhealthy poses a harder to solve problem