The other side of disease:
Stepping away from the fear and loneliness of chronic illness.
Meet Amanda a 26 year old wife and mother to 6 year old Tessa. She comes to my office because the daily panic attacks, chronic pain, and allergic reactions to seemingly every food she eats is ruining her life. Her symptoms have become so intense she can no longer work a full time job leaving her husband John solely responsible for their family’s financial needs. She has been struggling for 3 years now and despite dozens of healthcare specialists and an extended stay at the mayo clinic things are only getting worse.
Her medical doctors run test after test and can’t find anything to explain her symptoms and her forays into alternative medicine always seem to start with hope and end with anguish as each new person is confident they can help only to tell her (after thousands of dollars) that she is the exception.
By the time she arrives in my office they are struggling to pay their mortgage and her relationship with her family and friends is strained to the breaking point. The doctors tell her she is “healthy” so her family thinks she should “suck it up” and get back to work, and she has lost most of her friends since she regularly cancels when she doesn’t feel well enough to be social. To top it all off she is struggling to be a good mother to Tessa. “I try my best to play with her but I often feel so sick she has to entertain herself, I feel like a terrible mother!”
Stories like this are common in the healthcare field. For so many people with chronic illness we become separated from those around us as our lives become progressively more limited by our internal struggles. This is compounded when we are unable to find a diagnosis that society recognizes that can “justify” our symptoms. As a society we tend to view health as synonymous with “disease free” as if someone is healthy simply because they don’t have a medical reason not to be. This isn’t the case however as health is more than just simply the absence of disease, health is also the presence of something positive; it is a state of thriving physically, mentally, and socially.
We need to remember that while a disease may exist on its’ own in a textbook, in real life it is not independent of all the other aspects that define a person’s health. When we recommend a surgery, therapy, or medication to help alleviate symptoms we tend to forget that we are treating a living, breathing, dynamic individual. In the end it is not our intervention that solves the problem but rather the body’s ability to use what we offer to heal itself.
Most of my clients have stories like Amanda’s. They are desperate for an answer they cannot find and struggle daily with isolation, fear and uncertainty. “How am I going to get through tomorrow?” “What if this doesn’t go away?” Without the ability to name the disease people like Amanda don’t know what they can do to help themselves, they don’t know if they are going to continue to get worse, and they can’t make a plan for their future. Each new test or specialist gives them hope of a diagnosis, because with a diagnosis comes a list of what they can do to help themselves, what is safe or not safe, and an idea of what the future holds.
If you are here then you or a loved one is feeling a lot like Amanda and her family. My hope is to help you understand that disease is only half the equation and health is the other. There is no need to wait for a perfect diagnosis to start feeling better, or to limit how great you can feel by what you have been told about your disease. You can start improving your health today and let the disease fade away.
We help take away the uncertainty, fear, and drama that so often comes along with chronic illness. We inspire, educate, and guide you into a place where your dreams become your reality and rather than your disease holding you back, your exceptional health drives you forward.
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