Are Well-Meaning Friends/Family Driving You Crazy?

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We’ve all been there – many of us deal with it every day . . . the well-meaning friend or family member who comes running every time there’s a new pill or treatment available for our chronic illness. We know they just want to “help” us get better, but it’s crazy-making to constantly be bombarded with new things to try. It’s especially bad when we try the wonderful new treatment, and it DOESN’T WORK! Then we get to deal with their disappointment and questions about, “Are you sure you’re doing it right?” or “Did the doctor give you a strong enough dosage?”

Healthy people mostly only have experience with things like colds, flu, and infections; with maybe a few injuries thrown in. For simple stuff like this, it’s easy — take a few pills for the symptoms of the cold or flu, and in a week or so, it’s gone; take an antibiotic for about 10 days, and the infection is CURED. Injuries involve some down time for healing, and maybe a little physical therapy, and everything is back to normal. Because this is all the experience they have with illness, they assume that ALL illness is like that.

I call it “the antibiotic theory of chronic illness.”

Managing Your Healthcare Team, Part I

Living with chronic illnesses affects us in so many ways that it’s really impossible to even list them all. Each of us lives within our own little universe of illnesses, symptoms, and needs. The one thing that is the same for every one of us; no matter which diseases, syndromes, or disorders we have; is the need for medical treatment in some form.

Because we frequently have multiple illnesses which affect different parts of our bodies, we may need to see an array of specialists on a regular basis. This quite often causes major complications in our treatment, since many doctors try to treat in a vacuum, ignoring the effect of their medications and recommended procedures on any disorder that is not part of their specialty.