Ask anyone with any chronic illness, and I bet every one of them will talk about the emotional toll it takes - in some cases, the emotional toll can be worse than the physical symptoms themselves - if anything, your emotions can help fuel the physical symptoms like adding extra fuel to an already raging fire.
Recently, one of our dogs had an accident - an accident that was bad enough that he needed stitches (11 to be exact) in order to heal the wound. With that, he had to wear a cone on his head for 10 days. He wasn't allowed to use the stairs, so we had to take away some of the freedoms we give our dogs. He wasn't allowed to go for walks; he wasn't allowed to go outside to go to the bathroom by himself. Simply put, for 10 days, he wasn't allowed to do most of what dogs enjoy to do (of course, his favorite activity (eating) wasn't hampered very much). I wasn't really thinking about what could happen when you have a dog under a cone for that length of time, but when he went back to the vet to get it taken off, he ended up having an ear infection due mostly to the fact that he was so restricted with the cone for so many days.
There is a point to the above paragraph - and it is something I asked Colleen recently: Wouldn't we be better off if we were all dogs? Josh went through all of the above stuff, and barely blinked an eye about it - sure, he cried when he was left downstairs by himself. But that was the extent of his "emotional" pain. He just accepted it - another day in the life, I guess you can say - without any real knowledge of what happened, why it happened, or thinking if he will ever heal. He didn't have to think about whether he would ever go for another walk, or if he would ever be able to climb the stairs. Dogs live in the moment - one second at a time, and every morning they wake up is Christmas to them.
Of course, as humans, we cannot act like dogs - we have the capacity to think logically. We have the capacity to go down the road of "I will never get better". We have the ability to laugh, cry, be mad at the world. There isn't much we can do about that - we can't shut off these sections of our brains.
I wrote up a recent blog entry about a course of action Colleen has. The first course of action (trying Erythomycin again) has been a colossal failure. It hit her so hard that she is sicker now than she has been in a while, and simply needs to stop before the course of treatment ends. The emotional part of this is simple: Another dead end, another stone turned over that lead to no improvement. Is it the end of the game? No. She has another antibiotic to try - one that is designed for bacteria in the stomach; but one that is also known to be initially very tough for the body to handle. One of the positives of her next course of treatment is actually the unknown; unlike Erythomycin, she has never tried this particular drug before - so she doesn't have a baseline to compare it to.
As a loved one, I think this one is simple: If your spouse/son/daughter/etc. is experiencing the emotional pain that comes with being very sick, you will also feel it. There is no "correct" approach when your loved one is going through a rough time - sometimes, just being an ear is enough. Sometimes, a hug is enough. Sometimes, trying to make them laugh or get their minds off of it can be helpful. But it all needs to be tied into one simple thing: Compassion for the patient.
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