My Kind of People

Chronic illness is used as such a ‘catch all’ phrase these days. It covers a myriad of illnesses, diseases and disabilities. But then couldn’t all of those words be used in the same vein? Don’t all chronic illnesses ‘disable’ us in one way or another? Make us feel ‘diseased’? 

Chronic, as it relates to illness, is defined as ‘persisting for a long time or constantly recurring’. Its meaning is clearly definable but the number and variety of conditions it covers is certainly not finite.

Health, and especially frequently poor health, naturally hits highs and lows. Sometimes those lows last for what can seem like the longest time and you struggle to see an end to them. This can be hard enough to deal with on your own, but factor in having to communicate your health issues to the outside world and you’re faced with a whole new set of complications to deal with.  Explaining the intricacies of a condition to an outsider can often be intimidating and challenging to say the least; particularly if you are new to it yourself and still learning. When we do discuss our condition with others and don’t get the response or reaction we perhaps expect, it can be quite the setback. Often living with a chronic illness can feel humiliating. It can be embarrassing, distressing and complex. Often we don’t want to talk about our condition, which is wholly our right, of course, yet sometimes our symptoms make that privilege all but impossible. If it is a visible condition it allows for comment, and that’s something we sadly can’t control.

So pulling on at that thread of uninvited comment, a certain infuriating phrase that sticks in my head, and has been said to me upwards of 168798782784240 times, (at last count anyway) is:

 “There always seems to be something wrong with you…”

This is generally said as an off the cuff, (perhaps feeble attempt at humour?) with a snide undertone. It’s often spoken with a question mark at the end of it; as though we are somehow expected to answer to it. It’s not really deserving of a question mark in my humble opinion as it’s more of a statement of fact. I’m not sure what the relevance of such a question is either, other than to remind us that we are ill, ALL THE TIME. Sadly something we are all too aware of already.  The only answer that could be given to such a bizarre poser (and I find it most effective bellowed through a megaphone) is “YES, THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME: IT’S INCURABLE”. But that response only served to get me thrown out of the library and banned from the local church the last 5 times I used it.

It is phrases such as these that are upsetting to someone with a disability and/or illness for many, MANY, reasons. Let me count the ways. (7. There are 7 ways).

1.  It implies we are being untruthful about our health problems. If you have to query in a suspicious tone that expects us to answer for an incurable condition then you nail your ‘I DON’T BELIEVE YOU’ colours firmly to the mast. This funnily enough doesn’t make for a comfortable conversation to follow.

2.  It makes us feel like a nuisance. No person who even remotely cares for another person should make them feel this way. Implying we are using our condition for attention or exploiting it for our own gain is just mean at the root of it.

3.  It singles us out. We don’t want to be sick, and we certainly don’t want to be treated any differently to a ‘normal’ person. Suggesting we are seeking some end goal other than the best
possible health makes us retreat into our shells and that can be increasingly risky for those of us with already wavering mental health.

4.  It makes us feel we are appearing like a hypochondriac. Anyone with a chronic illness dislikes hypochondriacs intensely. We have to eat, sleep and think about illness every day; we don’t need to hear you give us chapter and verse on that one time in 1983 when you had the measles. Just because you perhaps aren’t used to hearing people talk honestly about an incurable condition doesn’t make it any less true when we do.

5.  It silences us from talking about our illness. This is NOT good. We need to talk about our conditions because it allows us to educate, share, unload and learn. The more we remain silent on what we are experiencing the more withdrawn we become and the more ashamed we feel.

6.  It makes us feel embarrassed and ashamed. As above: not good. Something we should never allow ourselves to feel. Chronic conditions can get such bad press; we need to be at the forefront of changing that, not being beaten down by uninformed opinions.

7.  It reminds us that THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING WRONG WITH US. Yes, we KNOW.

On the flip side of this ghastly and mildly insensitive coin however, when met with thoughtlessness of this degree, I often try to mentally counter these statements with any positives I can find in them. Easier said than done, especially when you are still clutching a knife to their throat, but if you take a mental (and maybe physical) step back, and look hard enough you are bound to find something.  Let’s throw the negativity over the balcony, crushing it painfully below, causing irrevocable damage, and try that now.

1. Yes there IS always something wrong with me yet I’m still here, being alive alongside you, making me better than you in so, so many ways, and that’s excluding my impressive rack. 

2.  No, nope, sorry I think that’s all I can come up with. Maybe I’m just not a very
forgiving person.

The issue with phrases like the aforementioned “There always seems to be something wrong with you…” is that, whether intended that way or not, they are simply unkind and just so unnecessary. As I’m not (at time of writing) practiced in mind control, I can’t stop people thinking things like that of course, but I can certainly voice my discomfort when they allow the words to leave their lips. Meaning if you’re going to openly say something along those lines to someone with a chronic illness then you should really be prepared for the potentially messy fallout.

What may seem an entirely innocent comment on our condition to you may come across as a not-so-subtle jibe directed at us for reasons we’ll have to retreat into paranoia to discover. You see, it’s not ‘just a joke’ when you make another human being feel essentially lesser.

Kindness is so easy. It’s often found simply in inaction. It’s effortless! You can be kind by just not saying that thing you know would be taken badly should the person it’s aimed at hear you. Just don’t say it! It’s that simple! You can be kind by taking a moment, just one precious moment, to consider the outcome
of your words. If you have an inkling that what you are about to say to another
human being may be mean or insulting then just don’t say it. NO, you won’t
receive an award for it, but you also won’t receive a black eye, so swings and
roundabouts. Think bad thoughts by all means; we ALL do that. It’s one of the silent joys in life. But in much the same way you wouldn’t follow up saying “I’ll kill him” with then committing
ACTUAL MURDER, you can think we are lazy (for example), without actually
accusing us of being so. 

Maybe just consider this: Are you the type of person who deliberately sets out to upset and offend another human being whose only crime is not acting or looking the way you want or expect them to? If you answered yes to that then I hope you find what’s missing in your life someday. 

(See how easy it is to be kind instead of wishing you dead?)

Hello, I Love You

In the early days of our relationship, when my BF and I used to argue (and we used to argue a LOT), I’d often fall down. Flat out flop unconscious. I’d pass out and he’d have to rouse me. It was in equal parts humiliating and frustrating. I didn’t want to do it – it was out of my control, it was like my body would literally shut down at the first sign of stress. This didn’t happen all the time of course, just occasionally, and he’d naturally be panicked, worried (and confused). Perhaps suspicious even; that I was somehow doing it on purpose; faking it.

I wasn’t. But I entirely understand why he might think I was. It was ‘convenient’ – a distraction from the heat of an argument. Only I’d black out, so the argument was 500miles from my mind when I came round.

The funny thing about all of this is I’m so stubborn and defensive during arguments, that fainting in the midst of it is the absolute last thing I’d want to do. As I’m sure you can appreciate, it’s hard to win an argument when you are unconscious.

Nowadays I’m older and (hopefully) wiser, and I try my utmost to discuss rather than destroy when talking with the man I love. I try not to take things personally or immaturely assume that one cross word is going to be the end of us. I try not to ‘win’ in a game where we should be equals. Thank-fully I also no longer faint when we do get into a disagreement.  

This fainting was a direct and physical reaction to stress. My body couldn’t cope with the extremes and would quite literally shut down. I didn’t know I had Crohn’s Disease back then; I just knew the way my body was reacting was far from normal.

But, as all insecure women are inclined to do, I just lost myself in my own head and logically assumed I was insane. Thank-fully I’m not insane, (diagnosis pending I’m sure) but unfortunately I do have a chronic illness. Knowing that stress is such a massive source of my physical symptoms has allowed me to attempt to manage it. Of course that’s much easier said than done.

But in amongst this assortment of symptoms and barrage of knowledge about an ever changing condition where does the other half of me fit in? The man who has to watch as I collapse in front of him, when I throw up after he’s cooked for me, when I writhe in pain in bed next to him? I feel a great deal of guilt in being ‘sick’ and in love with him. I’m too selfish to leave him of course – can you IMAGINE how often I’d collapse if I saw him with another woman?

He doesn’t want me to leave him of course, which is a great relief to both me and our mortgage provider. 

But due to one of our twosome being in a state of permanent illness, he is the one who has to see the person he loves in pain. He is the one who feels helpless and frustrated for me. He is the one who has to spend nights alone when I retire to bed ill yet again. He is the one.

I love him. And I love all the partners of women and men with chronic illness for their unyielding patience and compassion. It must be hard to maintain your own personality when everyone around you asks “How is she/he?” before “How are you?” It must be stifling when huge chunks of your conversations are about someone else. So it’s important we remind the people we love they are appreciated. It might be hard for us to tell you that when we are consumed by pain or our own misfortune, but we feel it. Patients become selfish because we are thinking about illness 99% of our day – we are sad and exasperated and don’t want to feel the way we do. But we are in there waiting for you to pull us out of the doldrums, and remind us we are still more than an illness.

We owe you the same courtesy; so please know that we appreciate you and everything you do, and often everything you don’t do; every time you don’t roll your eyes when we complain for the 50^th time in an hour, when you don’t have a tantrum when we cancel a night out, when you don’t show your frustration when you’ve cooked for us and we can’t eat it.

We see it all. We see you, and we love you.