Becoming an expert on your illness can help you cope.

Managing chronic illness requires becoming an expert on your health in order maintain normalcy and to deal with challenges as they arise. Further, taking responsibility for your health empowers you to advance your quality of life, reduce helplessness, and promote self-esteem.

Choosing to Be an Expert

When I was first diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia more than five years ago, I wanted someone to tell me that living with chronic illness would get easier. I wanted a quantifiable measuring tool to tell me where my life would be in a year or five years or even ten years.

Over time, I found that both the best scenarios and the worst ones are in my control. While I didn’t know what the future would hold for my health, I could still believe that I did have some control over my life. I could either live with my conditions day-to-day, responding to and dwelling on the changes and symptoms as they happen, or I could take charge and become an expert on my diseases.

Becoming an Expert

Here are the five ways I became an expert on managing my health and living successfully with chronic illness.

Understanding My Illnesses - The more I knew about my illnesses, the more I understood what was happening to me, why, and how to best handle my situation. I consulted with my doctor and I read up on my conditions. I filled my mind with information about my health and my illnesses and I was able to make better and more informed choices. In doing so, my life got better and I felt a personal power over my health.

Making My Doctor My Partner - Getting the best care is only possible when your doctor answers questions clearly about your treatment and symptoms. But your doctor cannot do that if you are not open about how the illness and treatments affect you. Through my honesty, my doctor and I were able to become partners in my healthcare. Moreover, I take my doctor’s advice, ask questions, and share my concerns and opinions.

Investing in My Physical Health - A big part of living with chronic illness is making healthy lifestyle choices. People with chronic illness need to make good nutrition choices, be active, lose weight, and pace themselves in order to feel better and to handle day-to-day responsibilities. Because of our busy lives, however, we have a tendency to not place emphasis on these things. Experience has shown me how vital investing time and energy into sound choices is to my long term physical and mental health. And by making good choices, I can continue to claim expert status as I live successfully with my illnesses.

Focusing on My Spiritual Health - Focusing on your spiritual health is just as important as focusing on your physical health. I have put time into finding the best ways to nurture my spirit. Participating in yoga, prayer, meditation and writing have helped me to feel whole and alive and have allowed me to continue working towards being the chief authority on my health. Neglecting my spiritual health would be detrimental and result in a loss of joy and life fulfillment and I don’t want that.

Choosing Hope -

In order to keep things in perspective, I choose to be hopeful and optimistic. Doing so has lightened my burden and made living with chronic illness manageable and tolerable. I choose to look for humor and motivation in everyday things such spending time with loved ones, enjoying nature, and finding ways to keep smiling.

It Gets Better, Not Easier

Life is stressful and complex, and chronic illness makes it even more so. While there is no way to completely eliminate life’s stresses, you can still find better ways to live day-to-day alongside illness. Some days will be harder than others, but if you are confident in your ability to keep moving forward you can successfully and positively coexist with your chronic condition.

I know first-hand that finding the right mixture of practical skills and a good mental attitude is the key to being an expert on your chronic illness. I also recognize that chronic illness does not get easier but it does get better. Life with illness is much healthier and more fulfilled when you choose not to dwell on illness and focus on your overall health. I choose the latter option every time.

To learn more about this topic:
7 Tips for Balancing Chronic Illness and Your Home Life
Coping with Chronic Illness in Marriage