It's hard to stop comparing our sick bodies to the people around us, but once we do, as both patients and caretakers, we learn to honor our own experiences and value ourselves in new and beautiful ways.
PUBLISHED February 17, 2018
Samira Rajabi was diagnosed with a vestibular schwannoma, also known as an acoustic neuroma in 2012. She has had ten surgeries to deal with her tumor and its various side effects. She writes a blog about her life, surgeries, recovery and experiences at LivingWithHerbert.com. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studies media studies. In her spare time she plays with her two pups and spends time with her husband exploring Philadelphia.
It's been more than a year since my last brain surgery. I have had time to recover, and I'm no longer acute according to medical professionals. I have done my course of physical therapy, I have returned to life as a functioning member of society and I take my medicine every day in such a way that it has become routine. Also routine is the precariousness of my daily existence, both in my mind as someone who survived a trauma, but also as a chronic pain sufferer. I know I am always one big sneeze away from a massively debilitating headache or one rapid movement away from losing my balance. I don't often talk about those things anymore, except with my husband, perhaps because they are tiresome and smack of complaints. I don't want to be labelled a complainer, thus any suffering I have is relegated to the margins. So, when the pain suddenly and needlessly makes a comeback into my life, I try not to complain. I assume everyone around me is as tired as I am, as rigid in their back as I find myself to be, and that their day-to-day existence feels as precarious as mine does.
The other day on my Facebook feed, I saw an article posted in a medical community that was admonishing people who tell their friends who suffer from chronic illness that they, too, are tired. The article’s premise is that to articulate your exhaustion to someone whose baseline of existence is always exhaustion is to potentially dismiss their testimony of their disease. I don't necessarily feel that way; I feel like we are all entitled to be tired. That said, the article forced me to offer myself something I'd been lacking as of late, compassion.
The other day on my Facebook feed, I saw an article posted in a medical community that was admonishing people who tell their friends who suffer from chronic illness that they, too, are tired. The article’s premise is that to articulate your exhaustion to someone whose baseline of existence is always exhaustion is to potentially dismiss their testimony of their disease. I don't necessarily feel that way; I feel like we are all entitled to be tired. That said, the article forced me to offer myself something I'd been lacking as of late, compassion.
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