Saturday, March 31, 2012

We don't say "Invalid" anymore.

Last night I was joking around with a friend that I was going to do this whole invalid thing properly and sit around wearing a Victorian dressing gown on my divan. One just gets tired of answering every "how're you?" with "still sick, thanks." In our culture unless you're dying of cancer or some other really terrible disease, people just don't understand how a person can keep on getting sick all the time.

Well it can happen, and there are tons and tons of reasons that thankfully don't happen to a large percent of the population. I personally have an auto-immune disease and some chronic conditions that combined to create a really nasty soup of general ill-health. I have my good days, but then I also have my bad ones. There are no easy answers - there aren't even very many hard ones. We keep on searching out doctors and fixing everything we possibly can as we identify new issues. 

The point of this post isn't to ask for sympathy... but rather to answer some questions that I know some of my bloggers have been wondering. Yes, I do get sick a lot. Yes, we are doing everything we can to get me well. No, I'm not dying. Yes, it's a hard lifestyle but I've learned to cope about as well as a person can. And I treasure every day of good health that I'm allowed. 

We don't use the word 'invalid' anymore. It's become almost obsolete in our day and age. I think part of it is that it's associated with a general giving up of ever hoping to become well. Which isn't strictly true, but there are just negative connotations to the word. But the fact remains that even with modern medicine, there are still those of us who are pulled down by physical ill-health. All one can do is pray for relief and acceptance, seek out ways of healing the body, and use every good moment wisely.


4 comments:

Ms. Hope said...

You are in good company. There were many brilliant authors who struggled all their lives--or at least for a major portion of their adult lives-- with poor physical health, among them Dorothy Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (after reading her bio, I keep thinking of how much she reminds me of you!), and Robert Louis Stevenson. Of course, many, many others struggled with chronic depression, including Virginia Woolf and Hemingway. Your struggles can make you a deeper person with more to give to the world. Hang in there!

Elizabeth Amy Hajek said...

Thank you for reminding me of that! Honestly making that connection has been one of the things that has helped me deal with some of my struggles over the years... and I do hope that I will be able to follow in their steps and grow to be a better person and writer because of all this.

(And now I'm off to go study Elizabeth Barrett Browning some more because what they covered in Brit Lit II was obviously not enough!))

Allison said...

You're definitely in my prayers Elena! <3

Anastasia said...

Carry on with head held high! God has a plan for everyone (although he has a roundabout way of showing it, LOL)