The sick are tempted to give up in many ways. The most
tragic is to give up on living in response to unrelenting pain. Hopefully
before this level of despair takes hold, we can find ways where persistence can
move us toward a better life, even with illness, and even while living with
pain and reduced function.
The first path is to never give up until you find a
competent doctor, experienced in dealing with your symptoms or diagnosis. The
next step is to begin effective treatment. For many of us, just accomplishing this
takes years. Patients with vague, hard to diagnose illnesses are often
sidelined by doctors who don’t know what to do with them. Our health care
system pays for procedures and interventions, and if your doctor doesn’t
connect you with the tools in his or her toolbox, you may be treated,
literally, as if you are not worth much. Doctors may respond to their own lack
of expertise by blaming the victim, implying that if the fix isn’t obvious, you
must be faking, malingering or mentally ill. Understandably, after experiencing
this kind of treatment, patients can be tempted to give up looking for answers,
taking refuge in bitterness, or magical thinking about magical cures, or by
taking the mediocre doctor’s prescription to heart and deciding to ‘just live
with it’.
A better solution is to fire the doctor, move on, and never
give up until you meet the person or, more likely, the team that can offer help.
There are outstanding physicians out there, and they are not necessarily at
elite institutions. They are in small towns, and in small practices. Thy may
have the wisdom of years, or the fresh insights and enthusiasm of youth. They
may be GP’s or internists who will know where and to whom to refer you. Keep
looking. Once you have found your partner, know that settling on effective treatment
may also take time, a lot of it. You are unique, your symptoms and your system
is unique, it may take dozens of trials and adjustments and the aid of many
providers before you hit on the combination that helps bring your symptoms and
system into better balance. This persistence does not guarantee a cure, or even
the elimination of your symptoms, but it may mean you can find relief that
keeps your illness from progressing and makes your symptoms less severe, so
that you can live more fully.
Finally, making peace with your new life is not the same as
giving up. Wailing about all you have lost and how much you want your old life
back is part of the grieving you may need to go through, but it is also
stressful and exhausting. At some point we need to accept our new life with
illness, while never giving up on making it the best life it can be. These
aren’t mutually exclusive, but two parts of a healthy whole.
