Wednesday, 10 July 2013

30 Day Chronic Illness Challenge: Day 11

Day 11: Why do you believe you have the illness? Bad luck, a higher power or something else?

Well, this certainly provoked thought. I can’t say that I’ve ever given consideration to the “why” of my situation. I’ve been too wrapped up in the “what” to do and the “how” to improve things to ever sit down and give it the time needed.

I don’t think there is a definitive answer for me. Around the time I first started to come down with symptoms wasn’t an easy or pleasant time for me, but we’ve all had plenty of those so I don’t think I can realistically pin it to that. Partly this question comes down to your personal thoughts on the nature of your illness – given that medical science has given us nothing conclusive, I’m sure everyone has their opinion.

I always remember a friend of mine, the lovely Hapfairy who lives here talking about the idea that eventually science may find some sort of underlying cause or factor of predisposition which will unite a lot of conditions given that there are so many curious similarities. I’ve always leant towards thinking there is an as yet undiscovered predisposition towards autoimmune problems, mostly due to the frequent hereditary links of both specific conditions and general autoimmune disease in families. There are autoimmune conditions on both sides of my family but none of them match mine to date, hence my addition of a possible general hereditary link.

However, I’m not a scientist and nowhere near arrogant enough to assume there is no possibility that I’m wildly off track and won’t be disproved in the future.

Luck? It’s not a concept I put much store into. To me you go out and make your own luck, and if you sat back and felt everything was down to luck or a toss of the dice of fate I can see that being a downhill slope to never doing anything. Yes, in some ways it’s bad luck to have developed chronic ill health, but I’ve spoken before in this challenge about the positive things which have happened as a result which may not have happened otherwise, so for me it balances and is about the way you look at it as much as anything else.

And as for a higher power, I’m not a believer and neither divine will nor life after death give me much pause for thought. In summary of this lack of thought I’ll quote something my Dad (self-confessed Tolkien nut) once said:

“I may as well believe I’m going to the Hall of Mandos.... because that’d be a nice place to end up.”

(Ted Nasmith's "Luthien's Lament Before Mandos" - based on "Of Beren and Luthien" from The Silmarillion.)

No comments:

Post a Comment