people, places and things .. 10 Commandments for interacting with the chronically ill. April 3, 2011 at 7:59pm 10 Commandments for interacting with the chronically ill ©2006 Susan Williams, PublicHealthAlerg.org In the realm of chronic illness, one of our more challenging tasks can be gaining support from others. As if finding a knowledgeable and caring doctor wasn’t difficult enough, finding caring and supportive friends to surround ourselves with can be even more difficult. Most people are simply not capable of understanding, unless they have the misfortune of a chronic illness of their own. How many of us have heard something along the lines of “But you don’t LOOK sick...?” It makes one wonder how a sick person is “supposed” to look. If one were to hobble around on crutches, would their illness suddenly become more believable? Our society understands the visible, physical manifestations of illness, such as a broken bone in a cast or hair loss from chemotherapy. What many fail to grasp is the subtle, invisible manifestations of chronic illness. Symptoms such as pain, severe fatigue, and cognitive impairments are not easily visible to the average observer, which means that sufferers of chronic illness often look “just fine”. Our society is all about instant results - the mindset that we can just pop a magic pill and all our troubles will go away. When sufferers of a chronic illness do not quickly “get better”, we are often treated as if it were somehow our own fault. We may even be told that we are “hypochondriacs” or that “it’s all in our head”. Remember when you had the flu? You were exhausted, achy all over, and could hardly get out of bed. But, fortunately, the illness passed and you were back to your old self and usual activities. Now, imagine if you had never recovered from that flu. Every day, you wake up achingly sore and as tired as if you had not slept at all. Imagine trying to go through your usual activities while feeling this way. Not only do work, school, and regular tasks of daily living become near-impossible, but so do the smaller day-to-day things that so many take for granted, such as simply washing your hair or paying the bills. It is stressful, it is exhausting, it is depressing... and yet the chronically-ill person continues on in the face of it all. For those of you who may have, at some point, been the perpetrator of an otherwise well-intentioned comment, please understand that our illness is just as real as that of an amputee or other “visible” illness. To help aid those of you who wonder how to interact with a chronically ill person, allow me to present the Ten Commandments. 1. Thou Shalt Not Imply That We Are Not Truly Ill. You will not convince us otherwise with remarks such as, “You LOOK good,” or “But you don’t LOOK sick.” Even if you meant them as compliments, we perceive those kind of statements as insults because they imply that you do not believe us. 2. Thou Shalt Not Imply That The Illness Can Be Easily Fixed. People with chronic illnesses are persistent, if nothing else. We hang on, day after day. We see countless doctors, take numerous medications, do endless research, and continue hoping that the answer is just around the next corner. So please do not insult us by delivering diagnoses, remedies, or comments such as, “Why don’t you just...” or “Have you tried...” or “You should....” If it truly were that simple, I assure you that we would have done it already. We are sick, not stupid.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 17:03:24 +0000
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