1997 Archive 1: Life Change
For most of us life is good…until it isn’t. Even then, generally, things get better and then worse again, then better and so it goes. It’s a roller coaster, a smorsgasbord of pleasure and pain that we share with everyone else! Very few of us are accustomed to life getting worse, then worse, then, oh yes, worse again.
People with serious illnesses are used to this. But, that’s not me, is it?
Hating to break the bad news, sometimes, it is and, sometimes, we get really ill and don’t die or, at least, not in the short term.
That’s a good thing, right? Sure, except that it’s unusual. Everyone is familiar with get ill, get better or even get ill and die. Few people are used to get ill and live a completely different life with a horribly disabling illness in a wheelchair, whilst life goes on as normal for everyone else, for years – decades even – and then die!
I am one of the few. I live life in a peculiar limbo. I cannot live as I did. I am physically unable to. Change has been forced on me. My adult life where I feel in control, have independence, status and confidence lies shattered about me. I feel emotions that I remember from childhood – fear, worry, envy, anxiety and frustration – as I try to learn to function in a strange new world. In this world, I am invisible, powerless, unwelcome and unknowing. I have no experience of this and I don’t want it.
Scary: yes.
Chronic: yes, as in an illness or medical condition that lasts over a long period and [may] cause a long-term change in the body.
Persistent: tick the box for existing or continuing for a long time.
Illness: incurable, progressive, disease, sickness.
Condition: an hitherto unknown state of existence characterised by physical hardship and suffering.
1997 was the year this happened to me. Surely, things can only get better?
Leave a Reply