Diseases

Putting myself out there more honest and open than I normally would. Thus the silence. I don’t know what to say or how much I should say.

They say knowing the name of your affliction feels so much better. Uhm, maybe. I would posit that sometimes it doesn’t feel so encouraging to be told you have an incurable degenerative “disease.” I think it’s mainly the “disease” word that gets me. Maybe “condition” would sound less sinister? See, you have a couple of symptoms (and by “you” I almost always mean “me”), and even though it’s not a big deal, you go ahead and meet with a specialist to see what’s going on. When people tell me I have a symptom, like dry mouth, I’d shrug if off thinking “being hydrated is good for me. If you think my mouth is dry, it sounds like that is more of concern to you than it is to me. Whatever.” You know? You try to downplay it to be less doomful than it does, because you don’t want to feel like you have this affliction or disease or whatever. It’s not who you are.

(Abrupt topic change here.)

I’ve been on prescription drugs most of my life. Didn’t used to bother me at first. Modern miraculous science, right? Then sometimes a person occasionally feels bummed or resentful, like they’re a weakling if they can’t function without taking pills every single day. One usually gets over it, and trudges on. When the number of prescriptions start stacking up and you hear side effects like permanent vision loss, it’s possible to start wondering how much poison one is pumping into one’s body. At least, it can give one pause, especially knowing that it’s a build up of the drug in your system that causes issues. Every day you take it, one more grain of rice, piece of straw, but you wonder when the scale might tip t where the cost outweighs the benefit. You soldier on, taking the pills that seem to keep symptoms manageable. Then when the symptoms become more noticeable, I was scared to acknowledge them to the docs. What would they say if I admitted symptoms? They’d offer to pile on more pills, of course. Is it that bad that I want to avoid downing more toxins? Hmm, maybe not. They’d ask if I had symptoms in the morning that might last 30 minutes. I think to myself, heck, if you’re asking whether I want more drugs or if I’m willing to get up half an hour earlier to cope, I’ll keep my mouth shut and cope. Maybe this isn’t the right way to act, but can you at least see how my thinking made sense, even in a possibly warped, twisted way?

Then when you finally admit life isn’t as pleasant as you’d like, they pile on more pills. But wait, this pill makes me feel great! Wow, what was I thinking avoiding it? Maybe quality of life does matter. But alas, the prescription is a short-term fix, and while some reap lasting benefits, me, not so much. Let’s try more pills. Sure. Let’s go in or blood work every 3 months or so, to make sure said drugs aren’t destroying my body elsewhere. Have I mentioned I detest needles? So to say that I’m feeling bad enough to meekly submit to needle pricks that frequently says something.

I don’t know. I still don’t like that word “disease” and I dare say it haunts me a bit. Again, life-long condition we can try to cope with, while more wordy, sounds more palatable. But to feel like I’m a “diseased” incurable person still feels more dismal and hopeless. It won’t kill me, but it can easily progress to make life miserable. I start to wonder if it’s getting me down because something in my brain expects it too. Maybe I should have listened more carefully when they said that the prescriptions could slow down the progression of the disease. Maybe had we piled on more drugs sooner, I might be in better shape, as odd as that sounds. I thought the less you think about it, and the more optimistic you can be, mind over matter, right? Maybe my point is, does it do more harm than good telling someone they're diseased all the time so that the expectation gets engrained in their brain?