Living Life With a Major Illness — Part 1

Any­one that lives with a major ill­ness or has known a fam­ily mem­ber who has suf­fered or con­tin­ues to suf­fer from major dis­ease or ill­ness under­stands the effects it has on not only the indi­vid­ual, but on fam­ily and friends as well.  For the per­son suf­fer­ing, learn­ing how to cope with the con­di­tion and real­ize life doesn’t come to a stop regard­less of how severe the cir­cum­stances are is very impor­tant.  No mat­ter how bleak the out­look may seem, peo­ple who stay pos­i­tive and never give up should be com­mended for hav­ing mas­sive amounts of courage.  Through this series, I will share with you that accept­ing defeat is not an option.  These five steps that have helped me stay strong through the course of my dis­ease and I hope will help oth­ers going through dif­fi­cult times as well.

Find your higher power — This is absolutely the most crit­i­cal step.  Regard­less of your reli­gion, beliefs, or spir­i­tu­al­ity, hav­ing a higher power to help guide you on the right path is essen­tial.  For me, I had just entered into a per­sonal rela­tion­ship with God when I was diag­nosed with a lung dis­ease called Bron­chi­oli­tis Oblit­er­ans.  With­out ques­tion, I could have dipped into a seri­ous depres­sion and quite lit­er­ally given up, but God has been there every step of the way for me.  Spend­ing a lot of time in prayer, I real­ized that I was given this con­di­tion for a rea­son, far beyond my own com­pre­hen­sion, and only God knows the answers.  Reaching this rev­e­la­tion, I’ve been able to look foward to what the future may bring and won­der what He has in store for me next. (Seems He has led me to Blog­ging!) Which leads me to my next step:

Look Beyond the Self Defeat­ing Ques­tion  - This has been one of the tough­est steps for me.  Every­one who gets sick wants this uni­ver­sal ques­tion answered: Why Me? Nobody on Earth has the power to change the past, so why dwell on it? Regard­less if you think your sit­u­a­tion could have pre­vented or not, blam­ing some­one is not going to make things any better.  The impor­tant thing to accom­plish now is fig­ur­ing out what you CAN do.  I may be lim­ited to a chair most the day, how­ever, now that I’ve found Blog­ging, an inter­est of mine that I had neglected my entire adult life has been renewed: Writ­ing.  I’ve always enjoyed writ­ing, but when I was active and healthy I never felt I had enough “time” to do it.  Now, time is a great ally of mine. Being lim­ited may have slowed my body down, but my mind is still active and curi­ous.  The pas­sion I’m pour­ing into my writ­ing is my ver­sion of self-therapy.  Find­ing YOUR hid­den or long-lost tal­ent and embrac­ing it will help you move past depres­sion and improve your qual­ity of life immensely.

Truly Appre­ci­ate Wak­ing Up Every Morn­ing — This might not seem impor­tant to every­one, but for those who are sick, this step is an unbe­liev­able feel­ing.  When I wake up in the morn­ing, I thank God He allowed me to have another day in His King­dom on Earth.  Hav­ing the chance to spend another day with those I love most is an inde­scrib­able feel­ing.  Blog­ging has pro­vided me an oppor­tu­nity to put this step into motion.  My goal is to con­nect to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble so that just maybe, my words will res­onate to some­one who needs that glim­mer of hope from some­one deal­ing with a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion.  Inspir­ing some­one that may be going to bed every night in a cloud of unmea­sur­able peril is my incen­tive to con­tinue writ­ing and touch the lives of those who need it most.

Sur­round Your­self with Pos­i­tive Peo­ple — I can’t tell you how impor­tant my sup­port struc­ture has been through this whole ordeal.  Hav­ing the right peo­ple around that pro­vide encour­age­ment and increase my morale has been incred­i­ble.  My wife, fam­ily, friends, church, and many oth­ers have con­tributed time, energy, and love into my life that has kept me pos­i­tive through all the tur­moil.  Even doc­tors of mine ask, “How do you stay so pos­i­tive?” My answer is always the same: “I have so many won­der­ful things to live for!”  If neg­a­tiv­ity even has an slight open­ing to creep in, it will con­sume you and quite pos­si­bly can make the dif­fer­ence between liv­ing and dying.

Don’t Be Afraid to Ask For Help — Under­stand­ing that lim­i­ta­tions exist in your life does not make you weak!  It’s not worth fur­ther injur­ing your­self because of pride or stub­born­ness.  This step ties in with hav­ing a great sup­port sys­tem in place, which allows the oppor­tu­nity to ask your sup­port sys­tem for help in times of need.  Unknow­ingly, you always pay them back;  It may be a sub­tle ges­ture or a sim­ple “thank you,“but this sign of appre­ci­a­tion shows just how mean­ing­ful their act of kind­ness truly was.  With that, con­tin­u­ing to per­form tasks that are rea­son­able and within your means, pro­vides a feel­ing of inde­pen­dence and self-worth.  To some­one suf­fer­ing, these feel­ings are immeasurable.

Thank you for read­ing Part 1 of my new Blog series Liv­ing Life With a Major Ill­ness.  My goal is to inform and inspire my read­ers to share these arti­cles with any­one suf­fer­ing and look­ing for guid­ance from some­one who under­stands.  I def­i­nitely don’t have all the answers, but I feel this series will be inspi­ra­tion not only for my read­ers, but for myself as well.  Please sub­scribe to my Blog by sign­ing up on the Home Page to receive email updates on when to expect my next arti­cle in this series and many other things I have in work.

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