Life Over the Edge

A couple of days ago I was reading through some other blogs that deal with autoimmunity and the consequent life issues.  One lady, Lisa (at Chronic Illness and Pain Support ) wrote a post about her current situation.  Lisa writes a great blog with wonderful advice for those of us who deal with chronic illness.  The blog post I read was “You Must Be Feeling Better” Uh..No… “  This is a great post dealing with the realities of coping when we have a time when our illness gets worse.

Lisa makes a comment that she thought she should be past having emotions about her chronic illenss.   We would all like to feel that we’re at that point after years of coping!  But I believe that it is perfectly normal to have feelings–frustration, anger, sadness–when experiencing a worsening of our chronic conditions.

There is a time, when after the first diagnosis and life changes, we have come to terms with our chronic situations.  After suffering with a chronic illness for years, we have become “experts” in how our bodies react to different medications, activities, and even the weather.  We have learned how to deal with our illnesses when they take a turn for the worse.   In short we have learned to cope with our situations and illnesses.  That’s a great and healthy accomplishment!

Even so, I believe we have more than one instance of coming to terms with our chronic illness. We experience waves and phases–ups and downs–with our illness, and have resultant emotions with each wave or phase.   For instance, when we reach a plateau, or our illness decides to really mess us up by taking a major downturn–it is normal to have similar feelings as when we were first diagnosed.  We are facing a new situation with our illness…and feel overwhelmed by the circumstances and symptoms we are having.  Just when we thought we had everything under control, then bam!  Things are out of control once again.  It is only normal to have feelings about our chronic situation–all the feelings we had to deal with at the beginning can come crashing down on us once again.  But we need to remember we have past experience on which to draw to help us through!

Those  past experiences give us hope and strength to find the way through the new situation–whatever it may be.  We have learned to cope before…and we can learn to cope again.  Instead of getting caught up in the frustration, fear, anger, etc., we can choose to see how to deal with our current circumstances.  Draw on the lessons of the past.  And don’t be too hard on ourselves for feeling the emotions we thought were behind us.  Don’t repress these emotions–but try to work through them–and remember you have the strength and experience to face this new phase of your chronic illness.  Like the graphic of a button Lisa has on her site–it reads, “I’m choosing joy!”  We can find the joy once again by working through our chronic situation–and remembering the emotions are just part of the ride!