The Art of Getting Well
BY DAVID SPERO, B.S.N., R.N. Reprinted with permission.
PAGE ONE OF THREE PAGES
David is a nurse, journalist, and health educator who has multiple sclerosis. His book, The Art of Getting Well: Maximizing Health and Well-being When You Have a Chronic Illness is about "how we can recover our health and improve our lives, despite 'chronic' problems for which medicine has no cure." You can e-mail him or visit his website to learn more about this unusual and talented person whose book and classes for health professionals and the general public have received rave reviews.
"Illness is the best teacher.
Awareness is the best medicine.
Self-care is the best care."
Chapter One "Studies Show Life is Hard"from The Art of Getting Well: Maximizing Health and Well-being When You Have a Chronic Illness
This book is about "getting well, when life seems weighted against the possibility of our doing so. It explains how we can recover our health and improve our lives, despite "chronic" problems for which medicine has no cure. In these pages, you will find all the ideas and inspiration you need for successful self-care, ways to get better even in difficult circumstances.
Here's an example of what we're up against, and how self-care helps. When Cindy Wong was 45, she already had hypertension, thyroid disease, and clinical depression. "I wasn't taking care of myself," she remembers, which is understandable, since her husband had left her, with a rebellious daughter, aging parents, and a stressful job. "I didn't complain," she says. "In our culture, you're not supposed to."
Then she found herself in the Emergency Room, bleeding heavily from what turned out to be uterine cancer. Facing yet another illness, Cindy got fed up:
"Lying there, waiting for surgery, I promised 'If I make it through this, I am going to start doing something for myself.' I couldn't have told you what, but I'd been taking care of everyone but me, and it had to change. Afterward, I went to the Health Education office [of her hospital] to see what they had. I signed up for stress reduction programs and stretching classes. Later, I started exercising and meditating."
"It took me years to realize I had to put myself first. I cut back work to four days a week. I still take care of my parents; I'm still there for my daughter, but I make sure I get to my programs and do my meditation every day. My self-esteem is higher, because I'm taking time out for myself. My family relationships are actually better than ever; I have more energy, and my health has been improving."
Cindy isn't out of the woods yet, and she will probably never be able to throw away her medicines or party like a teenager. But she has taken control of her life, stabilized her condition, improved her general health, and become a positive, lively person, a joy to be around; no small accomplishment for a woman in her situation.
Getting well, or overcoming illness, doesn't necessarily mean cure; it doesn't mean living forever. It doesn't mean a list of dos and don'ts, pills to take and foods to avoid. It means improving our condition and gradually making our lives happier, healthier, more fulfilling. How much our health improves depends on the severity of our illness, the conditions of our lives, and the internal and external resources we can bring to bear. How much better we feel, depends mostly on us.
What's In It For Me?
Unlike some other self-care books, this one doesn't say we make ourselves sick or think ourselves well. It doesn't say, "take control of your life," while glossing over the difficulties involved. It doesn't even say, "Follow your doctor's orders." Instead, it gives a practical, five step program for recovery:
Slow down. Save some energy for our bodies and lives, instead of giving every last ounce to work, worry, other demands, or entertainment.
Make a change. Change something in our lives that damages us. No matter how small, any successful change builds our self-confidence and makes the next change easier.
Get help. We can't do it alone; life is a cooperative effort. Learn to find and ask for help.
Value our bodies and our lives. Listen to our bodies and treat them with respect. Fill our lives with more pleasure, love, and reasons to live.
Grow up. Educate ourselves, take responsibility, be assertive. Accept ourselves the way we are, but don't give up on getting better.
These steps would sound intimidating, even to me, except for three things. First, we rarely need the whole program. Anything we do for ourselves is likely to pay dividends. Second, every single step should feel good; the whole idea, supported by scientific studies, is that improving quality of life will improve our health. Third, you're probably doing many things right already.
So it's not as hard as it sounds. In these pages, we will meet people who have carried this program out, over years, one step at a time. They have overcome AIDS, heart disease, arthritis, chronic fatigue, lupus, fibromyalgia, asthma, cancer, and other conditions, including, in my case, multiple sclerosis. These are people I have nursed, interviewed or coached, not an elite group, but people with problems like those we all have. If they can do it, you can, too.
I am not promising any picnic or any miracles, though picnics are good for you, and miracles happen all the time. Overcoming chronic conditions is a challenge; it calls for all our intelligence, courage, and creativity, and all the help we can get. Barriers will block our way, and sometimes we won't even know they're there, just that we're stuck. This book will help identify and overcome them. With effort, time, and a few breaks, we may find the journey of recovery leading us to better lives, and better health than we had ever thought possible.
Not Our Fault
Before planning how to get well, it may help to consider the various reasons we get sick, only a few of which are under our control. Sometimes our genes are programmed for susceptibility to one or another awful disease. Some environments subject us to toxic chemicals, natural or man-made, while others are full of hostile organisms. Some of us live amid violence, without ever knowing physical safety, or in crazy families who deprive us of emotional security and self-respect. We may lack sufficiently healthy food or water. We may grow up without opportunities for exercise, fresh air, education, relaxation, or love.
Studies of stressful life events - job loss, divorce, relocation, death of a family member etc. - consistently show higher rates of all types of disease following such stressors. To these, we add all our maladaptive responses to life's insults: bad posture, attitudes, or diets, unacknowledged emotions, lack of exercise, overwork, hurry, various forms of self-abuse and addiction. All of these injurious behaviors were learned somewhere or adopted before we knew better, for reasons that were necessary, or at least seemed like good ideas at the time.
Most diseases, then, except for overwhelming infections or pure genetic defects, arise from numbers of factors stretching back through our lives and heredity, and outward through all our social and environmental influences, a web of causation that we can never completely sort out. For various reasons, our bodies (and minds) do not get their needs met, and they react by getting sick. Our bodies weren't made to last forever, and years of wear and tear eventually cause breakdowns.
Therefore, it makes no sense to blame ourselves for illness, to feel guilty about things we could not control. Guilt doesn't do anyone any good. Far worse than guilt, though, is helplessness, the feeling that turns us into victims without hope of salvation. Research shows that people with high "self-efficacy" (belief we can do the things we set out to do) and "internal locus of control" (believing we control much of what happens to us,) have fewer complications, less distress, and slower progression of illness than those who feel less powerful. Although we often don't know how much, if any, influence we actually have, we're better off acting as though we do. As we'll see in Chapter 6, we often have more control than we realize.
Continued on page 2.
© Copyright 2002, David Spero, B.S.N., R.N., from The Art of Getting Well: Maximizing Health and Well-being When You Have a Chronic Illness, reprinted with permission. For more information: Call 415-585-9851 or email David@DavidSperoRN.com |
