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Making Peace With My Chronic Illness Meant Going to War
Accepting my chronic illness meant overcoming three psychological battles
Syncope secondary to hypovolemia. There’s a shocker. I mean, it’s only the fourth time this year I’ve landed in here with precisely the same symptoms and diagnosis.
At some point in the next 24 hours, a nurse will be along to perform an ECG and an ABG. Then, if I am lucky, following a tortuous overnight stay, I’ll be sent home with a shrug and an espresso.
I lie stretched out in the E.R, tracing pretty patterns in the ceiling tiles.
My mouth is parched and a post-dialysis headache is ramping up. If I were home I’d drink a glass of water, but here in the triage ward, that kind of autonomy is frowned upon.
Standard procedure dictates you treat dehydration with saline, but as a dialysis patient, I am barred from any fluids. You’d think that being several pounds under my true dry weight means they’d make an exception, but I guess not.
So here I am, a rigid and unblinking cadaver fortunate enough to still have a double-digit blood pressure reading.
I’m angry, as evidenced by the emergence of my sarcastic inner voice.
I’m disappointed in myself for allowing hemodialysis settings I knew were injurious to my health.
I’m enraged because it took an entire team of nephrologists a concerted effort to screw my quality of life up this badly.
And beyond all else, I’m scared, because no matter how drained I’ll get, tomorrow will come and they’ll drive two 1½" needles in my arm and we get to do this all over again.
My Three Battles for Acceptance
I offer this hospital scene as a keyhole view of life with end-stage renal disease. It’s also an honest reflection of the self-defeating feelings that used to course through me every day.
This article is my attempt to chronicle how I transitioned from this state of chronic pain to an acceptance of what is.
The first battle in the war for the self was overcoming my self-victimization.
