12:42am March 23, 2013

Chronic illness is chronic illness.

Chronic illness is chronic illness. It includes a wide range of people.

People with asthma which is well controlled and barely makes a difference in their life. People in so much pain or weakness that they can’t get out of bed, or not often. People whose illness will kill them through organ failure or metastasis or inability to breathe or some other thing. And many other variations:

Variations in type. Variations in severity. Variations in cause. Variations in treatability. Variations in the course it takes. Variations in comfort level. Variations in possible abilities and activity level. Variations in how well we cope with things emotionally.

We are a very diverse group of people. And any one of us can move from any point in that diverse continuum, to any other point, with little to no warning. Whether that move is a good or a bad one depends as much on luck as anything else.

The only thing in common we have is that our bodies work in ways that modern medicine has classified (or is in the process of being classified) as a disease, and it lasts a really long time. That’s all.

There’s no requirement that we be completely incapacitated to qualify. Nor that we be able to work two or jobs and raise three kids, as my mom did with chronic bronchitis and Hashimoto’s disease among others.

I grew up to the sound of her coughing until she puked. It was normal. And she’s no less chronically ill than I am, with a diagnosis sheet a foot long and bedbound. (Her diagnosis sheet begins to resemble mine as she ages. Turns out many things are hereditary, including probably our neuromuscular disorders, autonomic dysfunction, and neuropathy.)

We can’t all always understand each other. And that’s okay. But we are all chronically ill. Even when I look at someone and wish I only had their amount of trouble. Even when someone looks at me and wishes the same thing.

I try to keep such thoughts to myself. Other people don’t need to hear their problems minimized. Nor do they need to hear things like “How can you possibly live with all that pain?” Lots of people have thoughts like that but the best thing to do is understand it’s almost always a shitty thing to think of someone and squash the thought before it becomes words out your mouth.

But yeah. We all have chronic illnesses regardless of all the differences. And the differences matter, but they don’t matter in the sense of playing the game of who has it worst, or who has it best. It’s not a contest. Comparisons of certain kinds hurt more than help. It’s just how our bodies happen to work.

So… I don’t know. My brain keeps dropping out when I try to write this. I think I began writing it after I saw people making the wrong kind of comparisons and saying “if you don’t have it as bad as me, you’re not chronically ill for real.” And that’s not how I see things at all. Worse, when you see things that way, you see everything a chronically ill person writes as comparisons. “She’s braggijng about how good she has it.” “He’s bragging about how tough he is for still being alive and happy with such severe symptoms.” When people are just talking about their lives, just like you probably want to do.

And I had better post this before my brain glitches again (8 times in this sentence, yay :-P Plus the words repeating in my head, “The train fell. The clown fell.” WTF brain.)