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Living with Chronic Illness

By: Monaliza Tharani

Chronic illness is the term used for the illness or disease process which last for longer period, usually more than six months. Diseases including diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, hepatitis C and asthma, multiple sclerosis are some of the more familiar chronic illnesses. In addition to chronic fatigue syndrome, immune dysfunction disorder, AIDS and some specific cancers. It has different devastating impacts on the life of an individual including physical and psychological trauma, economic and financial crisis, impairment in social interaction and activities and so on.

Physical impact appears in terms of some physical trauma as in case of cancer, certain symptoms including pain, nausea vomiting and many other problems affecting physical health of the individual. Moreover the side effects of the chemotherapy further add up the physical trauma for example hair loss, decrease immunity leading to multiple infections etc. Currently breast cancer is the most common cancer in the world. According to Bedaiway (2005), “It is estimated that 1 out of every 228 women will develop breast cancer before the age of 40”. And the most common side effects of chemotherapy of breast cancer is infertility, bone loss and other bone diseases. And some diseases like AIDS causes multiple infections e.g. tuberculosis, hepatitis C can cause liver cancer and so on.

Psychological impacts sometimes become so sever that the patient’s physical illness can cause a patient mentally ill. Depression is the most common psychological impact on patient’s health. There are different reasons behind it most of including stigma of disease, feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness, long stay in hospital and most of all is the fear of death. Most chronically ill patients are hospitalized frequently and have repeated surgeries and painful treatment. These in turn cause the psychological symptoms in patients. As mentioned earlier, patient with chronic illness possess stigma of the disease. This stigma could be due to the loss of physical body parts for example amputation in diabetes mellitus, or it could be the loss of hair in cancer treatment or it could be due to low self esteem as a result of having AIDS. This stigma isolates the individual from the society. Patient starts staying away from people and cut off from the society.

More over it’s not only the individual who is the sufferer of that illness but the whole families pay for it. When a person has chronic illness, all of the normal tasks of families are more difficult to carry out smoothly. The problems which a family face includes the financial burden of the illness as the process of disease is longer, care giver role strain, family conflicts related to the care of the patients and others. Besides the family level, this illness also has an impact on community level. These patients due to illness cannot do the job and this ultimately reduces to economy level of the country.

Although the above mentioned effects can be difficult to get controlled and individual and family both encounter a great challenge to cope with this illness, but the proper interventions can lessen the physical and emotional trauma of them. The intervention and strategies adopted by the individual include the adjustment to the condition. This requires proper treatment and follow up to the doctor. Moreover they should not compromise with their diet. Proper diet would help to have compliance with the treatment. They should maintain normal daily living as much as they can and stay connected with their friends and colleges so that they do not get isolated. This would help to keep their emotional, psychological and mental health proper and sound. In case of family coping, they should accept the situation and control their emotions because they can only help the patient and his/her emotions if they have control on their own. They should realize that they are the only source of psychological support of the patients. Moreover in order to overcome the care giver role strain, they should assign the work among different family members so that the entire burden should not come on only one individual. In addition to this the role of the health care professional is crucial. They should provide health and psycho-education to the family and patients in order to bring them to the maximum functioning. We all have to realize that to live with a chronic illness is really difficult therefore each individual should work on their own level in order to promote the life and alleviate the suffering.