You Can’t Be That Sick! You are So Young
I was twenty-four years old, enthusiastically living in new city, finding my independence, careers, and following my heart when I became disabled in a period days and was eventually diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. It only took about four weeks, but with two visits to doctors a week, explaining my significant pain, it felt much longer. Eventually I found a wonderful doctor of internal medicine who asked me about fifty questions. In about two days I had a diagnosis.
As with many people, having specific terms like “chronic” and “forever” attached to a painful condition can simultaneously create emotions of fear and relief. At least something describes the chronic pain. There were not many friends, however, that understood or participated in my enthusiasm for a diagnosis. And the office managers at my place of work were not concerned about my pain level, but rather about when I would be able to get back into some heels to keep the office looking professional.
“Encouragement” was quickly tossed around, like “You’re too young to feel so badly!” Rheumatoid arthritis was only something that could be related to the aches and pains their grandparents suffered from and a hot water bottle made it go away. They’d laugh and say, “You can’t have arthritis yet!” Those who attempted to sympathize, compared my weary body to a sports injury they had. “I have a touch of arthritis on my knee cap from football in college. It’s not fun when the rain comes, but you just have to keep pushing and not think about it.” Even well-intentioned words were enhanced by the brush off of a hand or even rolling eyes.
When you are diagnosed with a chronic illness while in your twenties, all typical decision making it thrown off schedule. This time in your life should be about choices for areas of education, a career, relationships, and even where you will live. Instead, all of these decisions are put on hold and you must make more life-changing choices – fast! How you accept (or do not) accept the diagnosis? What medications should you take? What is the risk of side effects and are worth it? How do you find the best doctor? We get a fast education on how to read lab test results, what forms of alternative treatments to try, and even when to let yourself have a good cry versus when to just bite your lip and hold the tears back.
I tried to make each decision based on thorough research, a bit of instinct, and “worse case scenario” situations. So when I heard someone facetiously say, “You’re too young to have that illness” it felt like a slap in the face; as if they assumed I was too gullible to fight the doctor’s diagnosis and get “right one” that could be cured with a simple pill. I had to be incorrectly diagnosed, they assumed, because, after all, I “looked so good.”
Laurie Edwards is the author of a great book called ‘Life Disrupted: Getting Real About Chronic Illness in Your Twenties and Thirties,’ She explains, “However infuriating and irrational such comments are, they only have the power to define or validate our conditions if we allow that to happen. There are all sorts of reasons why people find it easy to scorn or deny illness, especially in younger people who ‘should’ look and act healthy.”
The saturation of advertisements on television and in magazine for prescription medications has helped legitimize some illness, such as rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. There are downsides, however. For example, everyone considers her self an expert on the, plus they make their assumptions about how well the drugs work based on the ads. The advertisements show people with debilitating illnesses (healthy models, actually) who are astonishingly now able to water ski or join their kids on 300-foot water slides. While a certain percentage of people may experience remission, the majority of us are happy to be able to get up out of bed without assistance, get dressed, and drive to the grocery store. Ads and commercials fail to alert people that though an illness may be temporarily controlled, they are usually associated with immense daily chronic pain.
With each chronic illness, most of which are invisible, people will doubt that your illnesses impacts your life as significantly as it does. If you are in your twenties or thirties, they will be even less likely to understand that feeling better requires much more than a good attitude or a little bit of exercise.
