The Guilt Game

When you are diagnosed with a chronic illness, it can be quite easy to get caught up in the web of guilt.  You start feeling guilty both for what you do and for what you don't do.  There are all these unsaid shoulds such as: 

• If you have a chronic illness you should engage in all things to promote good health as in having a good diet, exercising, and never indulging in any excesses.  Even a rather innocuous activity such as eating not one but two chocolate covered donuts raises eyebrows of suspicion.  You must, in essence, be more healthy because you are sick.
• If you have a chronic illness you should be positively...positive!  If you are not positive at all times, you will be inundated with research to show that Negative Nelly's are more sick and more prone to croak sooner than their Perky Polly counterparts.  This research, of course, is probably done by Pollaynna clones, with plastic smiles upon their faces.  So turn that frown upside down Charlie Brown.  Don't let anyone see your pain.
• If you have a chronic illness you should be prepared for a role as saint.  All of a sudden you are seen as more courageous, more heroic, and more goodly.  Nobody will ever know that you are the cranky impatient scaredy cat you have always been.  You must rise to other's expectations of the noble suffering soul.  Let me cough for emphasis.  That is what all sick people do in the movies. 

There is this pressure to conform to some expectation of what a chronically ill person should be like in both personality and temperament.  And if you don't measure up, there is the tendency to feel guilty for what you cannot be which is perfectly inhuman.  The truth of the matter is, despite our illness we are still very human. And part of being human means that we are fallible and vulnerable and especially when we have a disease such as Multiple Sclerosis.

There is also the guilt associated with not doing certain things.  One of the first questions asked by most people after I tell them that I have Multiple Sclerosis is, "So what kind of meds are you on?"  When I tell them none, their mouths drop open. 

I had one friend tell me in a babyish sing song voice, "Usually when people are sick they want to take medicine to help themselves."  So therefore logic dictates that I must not wish to help myself because I am choosing to not take any MS drugs at this time.  This couldn't be further from the truth.  I have made a choice, a decision, based upon the facts and particular dynamics of my situation at this particular time.  I am in no way advocating that my choice is anything but my own.  What is right for me at this time may not be right for most people.  And furthermore, what may be right for me at this moment may not be right for me in the months to come.  With new and additional data, I may very well opt for another course.