Category Archives: Marriage

CaringBridge and National Family Caregivers Month

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Did you know November is National Family Caregivers Month? I didn’t, until CaringBridge reached out and let me know about their celebration of family caregivers. This awareness month comes during a time of year when we are particularly reflective and attuned to gratitude and the blessings of family, but if you’ve been following my blog lately, you know why the timing of this is particularly compelling for me:

We’re currently trying to find my father a match for a living donor kidney transplant. The ongoing coordination of this outreach requires a lot of time and energy, and more than that, the emotion of it is intense. This isn’t just a cause or a platform or some hypothetical advocacy—this is my father’s life.

None of us, especially my father, are new to caregiving. For example, just before my daughter was born my mother had a catastrophic health event that has forever changed her life and all our lives, and we’ve all juggled going to doctor appointments, picking up prescriptions, staying overnight, cleaning, cooking, doing errands, coordinating care, and managing the emotions that come with seeing people you love suffer and not being able to change it.

The National Family Caregivers Association writes, “Day in and day out, more than 65 million family caregivers in this country fulfill a vital role on the care team. No one else is in a better position to ensure continuity of care. Family caregivers are the most familiar with their care recipients’ medicine regimen; they are the most knowledgeable about the treatment regimen; and they understand best the dietary and exercise regimen.” It is a privilege, and a huge responsibility.

I write this from the perspective of both a caregiver (at times) as well as a patient, someone who has to rely on my husband and relatives when I am the one in a crisis, when I am in the hospital, or unable to leave the house. It is humbling to need to ask and rely on help, and it is challenging in many other ways to be the one providing care. Family caregivers, especially spouses, handle an incredible amount of stress on top of the everyday realities of work, household obligations, etc.

Typically, you don’t see sponsored posts* here. There are many reasons for that, (perhaps another post on its own?) but this time, the themes are so incredibly relevant and authentic to what I’m talking about on this blog, and the company, CaringBridge, is a nonprofit organization I truly admire and have utilized many times over the years, so it seemed like a natural fit. CaringBridge offers patients and families free websites to tell their stories, post updates, and communicate. It offers many ways for people to care for each other during any type of health event and is available 24/7, free to use, and accessible to anyone, anywhere.

Through CaringBridge sites I’ve followed little children fighting cancer, preemies in the NICU, and fellow health writers who just want a safe space to focus on the medical updates in their lives. There is room for photos, messages of support, and other personalized touches, including multiple privacy settings, that help connect patients and families in crisis. There is no advertising on CaringBridge; it is dedicated to families, not profits. That really resonates with me.

Coordination of care is always challenging, especially during acute health crises. After leaving an inpatient team meeting or getting important test results, it can be overwhelming to have to call and e-mail everyone to keep them posted, or keep track of all the details that need to be handled. Friends and family usually really want to help, but it’s sometimes hard to ask for specific, concrete things. In response to user requests to help centralize support, CaringBridge now offers CaringBridge SupportPlanner, an online calendar that helps family and friends coordinate care and organize helpful tasks, like bringing a meal, offering rides, taking care of pets and other needs.

I have been the patient in the ICU bed, struggling to keep friends and family in the loop, and I have been the relative huddled out in the corridor, trying to send texts, answer e-mails, and make sure someone has gone grocery shopping. I am glad services like CaringBridge sites and CaringBridge SupportPlanner exist—living with illness and caring for people with illness is hard enough. Some of the details should be easier to manage.

I am pleased CaringBridge is taking time to raise awareness for family caregivers, and acknowledge all they do on a daily basis to advocate for their loved ones, and I am grateful to have supportive caregivers, friends, and family in my own life. This month, take a moment to acknowledge those you know who are caregivers, and tell us a little about them here—they don’t do it for praise or notice, but a little encouragement can certainly go a long way.

(*And any questions about sponsored posts? Let me know! I very rarely post them, and will always be transparent. This content is sponsored by Caringßridge. Any opinions expressed in the post are my own und not those of CaringBridge.)

Who Would I Be Without Illness?

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For this week’s Patients For a Moment, founder Duncan Cross asks the question,

Who would you be without your illness?

He goes on to write, There’s a lot of emphasis in our community about staying positive, looking towards the future, optimism, et cetera – all of which has merit. But too much deliberate cheeriness denies us the ability to think and talk about what we’ve lost to our illnesses. We lose our ability to grieve for the person we wished to be, which seems to me an important part of adjusting to our circumstances. So the topic this time is that person, and how they would better, worse, or simply different than the person you are now?

Duncan Cross is one of the best patient bloggers on the Internet, in my humble opinion, and I’m glad he’s probing all of us like this because I too am bothered by the tendency to sugarcoat realities of illness among silver linings or attach maudlin sentiments to what can be demanding, painful circumstances.

I’ve mulled this question over several times the past few days. Indirectly, like in this post on illness and personality, I’ve touched on this question before.

Who would I be without illness?

When you’ve been sick your entire life, that becomes a much harder question to answer. I can’t mourn the “before” I never had, and I don’t spend much time speculating on the person I could have been otherwise because I am busy being and surviving. Illness has always been there, one of the few constants that remained predictable only in its unpredictability despite the many other changes in my life: high school, college, graduate school, career, marriage.

While I am at a point where illness is not the defining characteristic of my life, (and I know this because pushing back against or despite illness is no longer the main motivating force behind most of my decisions) clearly it is still present in nearly all of my choices and compromises.

It is impossible to pull illness out of the many threads that combine to make up the past thirty years, to take it away and see what would remain.

Certainly I can look at the accumulated losses over the years and see what could have been in those moments: all the birthdays, showers, holidays, vacations, weekend plans, family gatherings, and months of school I’ve missed over the years, all the disappointments that had me crying into my pillow as teenager and keep me awake at night as an adult.

There are definitely times when I wish those basic rights of passage that we often associate with living a “normal” life didn’t have to be so hard: What would it have been like to graduate from college with the same good GPA without having to study for tests in the ICU, or graduate from high school without a full year and half of it taken away from me, a blur of missed opportunities and make-up work?

What would it be like to live a life that wasn’t always in a state of catching up?

Or, what would it have been like to marry my husband without the “in sickness and in health” part of the vows already such an obvious and omnipresent part of our relationship? What would it feel like to dream about a future family with him without having to weigh so many competing risks and priorities, to be able to speak confidently in the language of “when” and not “if”?

And yet…

I know, here’s where you’re half-expecting, half-cringing, thinking I am going to say but it’s all been worth it and I’ve learned so much and I am a stronger person for it.

Don’t worry, didn’t I say earlier I don’t like a saccharine gloss applied to illness?

I don’t. Of course it would be nice to not have to fight so hard just to get to the starting line all the time. Of course I’ve had my fair share of anger and frustration and grief over that, and of course I realize that with progressive diseases those frustrations will grow more complicated.

That’s life. That’s the only life I’ve known and it’s the same life I grew up seeing for other family members.

There are some things I do know. For example, I’ve made a lot of negotiations in my career to accommodate illness and I know I might have made different choices if I were healthy, but I also know that no matter what else I might be doing, I would still be a writer. I would still have strong relationships with wonderful people, and who knows what other life obstacles would test our relationships besides illness.

I would still be a stubborn pain in the neck.

The thing is, I do not have regrets. I am proud of what I’ve been able to do and for me, to wish for what might have been, to wish for some hypothetical, abstract notion of “healthy,” chips away at what I have done.

For thirty years I have lived my life in extremes, and in the brief periods where things are stable I catch glimpses of what it would be like to live somewhere closer to the middle. So maybe that would be me minus illness, someone less extreme? But that could also mean someone with less determination or, as my husband says about me when I am exasperating, someone less feisty.

And I don’t know that I would want to make that compromise. My biggest strengths are indeed my biggest weaknesses and while illness may amplify those, I don’t think I’d want to be me without them.

Synergy (in an unexpected way)

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It’s been somewhat of a synergistic week.

Someone I love is in the middle of some serious health issues. I’m not going into detail because it’s really not my story to tell but more than that, the physical details don’t matter. What does matter is that this person faces a very long and difficult road, and is frustrated and in a lot of pain.

And I am on the outside. I am able to listen and make phone calls or do errands, but completely unable to do what any of us who care really want to do: make it better.

While I can understand the frustration and isolation of illness better than others might, even this familiarity is not enough to bridge the gap. Being able to understand the emotional aspects of this situation does not make me feel any less useless, or helpless.

And with that, I stopped and realized what it must sometimes feel like for the people who love us—so much of all of this is out of their control, too. We often write and think about control in terms of our own bodies—what medications we take, what preventive steps we adopt, what can go wrong not matter how carefully we plan otherwise.

But those who love us have their own frustrations (and I know this is but one of many). They can do so many amazing things for us day in and day out and most of the time, that’s enough. Most of the time, we’re all probably too busy living to stop and think about it much. But every now and then, it must really stink to stand by and watch someone you love go through a bad spell and not be able to do the one thing you want to, which is to fix it.

A couple of years ago I wrote this piece on marriage and chronic illness. I re-read it today, with an even deeper respect for what it takes to make a relationship so much more than the sum of its challenges, and an even deeper appreciation for my husband, who for four yeas (as of today) has shown me what it means to put someone else’s interests above your own without hesitation.

I know I am one of the lucky ones.

Valentine’s Sensitivity Training

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Were it not for the steady stream of slushy rain, the flood watch, and the generally miserable weather last night I wouldn’t have considered a Valentine’s post at all. That’s how cringe-worthy I find the obligatory Valentine’s post. But we’ll return to epics floods and wild winter weather in a moment.

First, a quick update on the great plague of 2008:

I can walk. And talk. At the same time. And, without coughing till I throw up or pop blood vessels across my face that even the hardiest concealer can’t hide. This is progress, people. There’s a long way to go, to be sure, but things are more manageable.

Now, back to winter floods. Last year, February 14 fell on a wretchedly damp, raw, icy day. In fact, our city street flooded and then froze, leaving all the cars encased in a couple feet of ice for several days. I remember this vividly because the walk to the subway was an exercise in survival and cabs were nowhere to be found.

I also remember sitting on the nearly empty train car (apparently everyone else decided dinner out wasn’t worth braving this weather, but we weren’t so faint of heart) with my scarf-ed, glove-ed, wind-whipped reflection staring back at me. I was so engrossed in what I was telling my husband I didn’t notice how quiet he was. I was really excited about new research on improved diagnostic measures for PCD I’d read about earlier that day. It was technology I’d already used at my doctor’s office, but I was pleased to see its efficacy confirmed and hopeful that widespread use of it might mean easier diagnoses for other patients (PCD is notoriously hard to diagnose).

Later, as the various courses of our Valentine’s pres-fixe dinner arrived, I was still animated and excited. He was still quiet. I was oblivious, he was frustrated.

Turns out, Valentine’s Day dinner might not be the best time ever for research chat. (Did I mention the obliviousness?)

It wasn’t that he felt we talked about PCD (or any of the other conditions) too much—day to day, there really isn’t much to say. You cough, you wheeze, and with any luck you breathe okay and manage to avoid catching an infection. There’s not much riveting conversation to be had about it.

And it wasn’t that he felt the new research was scary or depressing—on the contrary, it was full of hope and promise, and intellectually he understood why it was encouraging.

This information was good stuff, right? So where was the problem?

But on a night that’s supposed to be about us, the side of medicine, however positive it was, that accompanied our meal was less than welcome.

On a night that’s supposed to be about us, PCD and all its potential, good and bad (and with progressive diseases, the long term potential for bad is certainly a legitimate issue), was also a reminder that someone he loves is sick and he can’t change that or fix it.

And when you love someone, isn’t your first instinct to take away whatever it is that causes them pain or discomfort? (And would you want a reminder, however benign, that you can’t?)

Message received. Timing is everything.

This year is different. The epics rains ended last night and today is actually sunny. We’re driving to our restaurant this year because our reservation is late and now we have a driveway, meaning we don’t need to take the subway because our car is iced in and we don’t want to circle the block till midnight looking for a space.

And I don’t happen to have any new research or facts to share, but if I did, I’d save quoting the statistics and waxing poetic about the methodology for tomorrow.

We won’t need to talk about how I feel, because he will be able to tell by my complexion and my eyes and the way I inhale when I talk exactly how I am feeling and that unspoken understanding is better than any conversation.

The Measure of Choice…

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Read this Salon article, “The Baby I Turned Away.” Go ahead, click away from my page, read it, gauge your initial reaction to it, and come back to me. (C’mon, have I ever given you a bad reading recommendation?)

I couldn’t not write about this, but even after reading it a few times, sleeping on it, reading it again, wading through the letters posted, I’m still all over the map. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

Whether you think the author, Jessica Berger Gross, is a superficial “baby shopper” lulled by a romanticized ideal of India and motherhood or a woman who simply knew her limits and made the right choice (most reactions tended to split down these two lines), you have to respect the honesty here. It’s not easy to lay bare your most painful decisions, your fears, and your limitations, especially with such an emotionally charged issue.

I’m not interested in dissecting, praising, or bashing the author here. I’d rather explore the whole idea of choice. Choice, both within the context of this one article and in much broader terms, is a luxury. For example, the author had the option (read: financial security) to pursue an expensive foreign adoption. That alone is not something every person who wants a baby but cannot have one on their own can do, and she knows they are the “lucky ones.”

But so often the luxury of having a choice brings so many additional possibilities and consequences. In this case, the ability to pursue this adoption put them in the position to face tough, tough questions. As the author writes,

“I wished we were different people, the kind who would welcome this child, welcome the risks, with no questions asked. I wanted to help her, to make her OK. But what if I couldn’t? Could I love her anyway? To a parent, this question must be unthinkable. You love your child no matter what, accepting all limits and gifts. But we had a choice, and the magical thread that had spun us around this child for the previous two days was beginning to unwind and tangle.”

Ahh, the downside of choice. It forces us to confront our weaknesses, it shatters our perceptions of perfection.

Obviously I am approaching all of this from a different perspective than a lot of people who either applaud or condemn Gross. I’m not the parent of a special needs child, nor am I currently pursuing an adoption. But the whole idea of what is “normal” or “healthy” (Editor’s note: Go on and read this, too–it’s relevant to my position) and what happens when the future we envision is far different from the reality we inherit is an important one to me. And I think whether you’re talking about disease or developmental delays or emotional problems or whatever the special circumstance may be, it all boils down to the same fundamental debate.

What do you do when life doesn’t conform to your plans?

On the one hand, this sentiment from a Salon letter-writer, Late Again, gave me pause:

“Why would you CHOOSE something with so much heartache if you didn’t have to? Thank god there are people who do. But, really, most of us wouldn’t choose a difficult path given an alternative. The major advantage of adoption over biological birth is the notion of choice. Good for you all if you would check the box on the adoption forms that says “I’ll take anyone.” Most people wouldn’t. This is just one view…”

It’s a good point to raise in the discussion. Objectively, why take the harder road when you don’t have to?

But (and you knew there was a “but” coming) could you be cheating yourself out of unforeseen positives on that road? Could you be selling yourself and your potential to meet challenges short? I don’t know. There are a lot of parents out there who are much better equipped to speak on this, who have spent time in the trenches.

It’s tough. If I have a child, of course I wouldn’t wish for the child a life of sickness. Who would? (It certainly wasn’t in my parents’ plans for me, but then again, neither was all they have gone through and endured.) But I would be the first to say that that child’s life would be undeniably rich and fulfilling even in the face of illness. I’ve never had the luxury of health, not for one day on this planet, but I do not lament that things aren’t any other way.

The absence of choice is just an important facet of this discussion. You can’t always control the human body—who can conceive and who can’t, what diseases can be prevented or detected early and which ones cannot; you can plan for and hope for and expect good health (and all the accoutrements that loaded term brings) but that does mean it will happen, or that you have any say in that.

Sometimes you roll with the punches, and you do not have a choice. Challenges present themselves, even ones you want no part of, and somehow you meet them and keep on rolling. But if you’re lucky, you’re too busy living your unscripted life to even notice what you can or can’t choose.

Pragmatically, not everyone is this lucky. I know that. While I do not have many answers or conclusions, just lots of questions and speculations and thoughts that clearly run in circles here, I know at least one thing. I, too, am one of the lucky ones.

News, Updates, and 2007 At a Glance

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Before I take a brief look back at 2007, here are some recent headlines to think about as we move towards 2008.

The relationship between Pharma and physicians is a complicated and often controversial one, and I’ve noticed a lot of media coverage about it recently. Check out this Slate article about off-label prescription use—it pits the instinct of the physician against the “industrial-government-insurance complex of medicine’s last quarter-century” and is an interesting read, especially if (like me) you’ve been prescribed medicines for off-label uses before.

In a different angle of the Pharma-physician phenomenon (oh alliteration, how I love thee), this Boston Globe article discusses tough new policies limiting the amount of interaction and influence drug companies have with doctors at UMass Memorial Medical Center. Sounds promising, but its feasibility is a consideration.

Now that I’ve taken stock of the last week’s headlines, it’s time to reflect on some of the headlines that have appeared on this site. Perhaps this retrospective indulgence is merely that, but with a tiny bit of hindsight, I think I would categorize 2007 as a year of awareness—of being aware of how chronic illness affects those around us, of being aware of what others are going through and what lessons can be taken from that.

There have been ridiculous tales of medical mishaps and comic calamities (okay, I will stop with the alliterative abundance here, but who said anything about assonance?), and plenty of new voices who have made me laugh and impressed me with their grit.

There have been moments of profound grief, at once intensely personal and wholly universal, as well as moments of humility in the face of someone else’s pain. I’ve realized how much I owe the healthy one in my marriage, and how precious timing is when it comes to the people I love.

I’ve looked at books and the process of storytelling itself for inspiration and understanding. I’ve had some personal highs and I’ve only been in the hospital a few times, a different kind of personal high indeed.

From gluten wars to medicine and politics, it’s been a busy year for acknowledging and understanding disease and its many manifestations in our lives.

May you all have a happy and healthy 2008!

So What About the Healthy One?

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I started a line of thought in my most recent post that warrants its own entry: the reason no illness is ever truly invisible is because the people who love us can decipher the many signs and symptoms of illness no one else can. I think it’s important to explore what it’s like for our partners or spouses when a shared illness is invisible, because it isn’t easy. It isn’t fun, or glamorous, or fleeting.

And it certainly isn’t fair.

I mentioned previously that my husband can tell from the single word “hello” if I am having a bad day. The reason he is so attuned to me is because he has spent our entire relationship doing things for me and because of me that no one ever sees:

Performing my chest PT when I need an extra treatment. Racing to hook up my nebulizer when I can’t get it myself. Picking up my prescriptions and accompanying me to doctor appointments when I am too weak to get there on my own. Eating outlandish food that does not contain wheat, poring over recipe books to make my limited diet more interesting. Wiping my forward when I am clammy, holding my hand when I have palpitations. Taking me to the ER and spending nights wide awake next to my hospital bed. Rubbing my back when I cannot stop coughing and knowing when to thrust the spit cup under my mouth. Staying nonplussed when steroids make me moody and unpredictable, carrying things for me and doing all the shopping and housework and lugging when I cannot help him at all. Understanding when we have to cancel long-awaited plans, miss outings and trips, or have to leave early because I am not feeling well.

(Loving me when I am at my lowest, loving me when I cannot recognize myself.)

And these are just the physical things, the actions and reactions precipitated by symptoms and medications and infections. I cannot leave out all the other realities of his life with me: The enormous medical expenses that will never go away. The financial ramifications of the career choices I have made in the interest of my health. The fact that in some ways, we are limited by my illnesses in ways that have nothing to do with stamina, oxygen stats, or infection rates. The fact that no matter what, progressive diseases mean things will never be uncomplicated and there will always be nagging fear.

“You’re sure you know what you’re getting into, right?” I asked him during our engagement, only half-kidding. But the man who was not scared by IV bruises the night we met, who did not mind spending part of our honeymoon scouting out a Walgreens and playing Scrabble while I used my neb, does not seem daunted.

(He’s crazy, I think to myself. And I’m lucky.)

Acquaintances are surprised if they find out I am sick, and friends who do know often do not realize it is in any way life-defining. This is because I look healthy when we split bottles of wine and pore over appetizers; this is because they do not see me on any sort of day other than a good one (and lucky for both of us, there are so many more good days than there used to be). So aside from my immediate family, I do not think many people realize the cost of invisible illness for him, for anyone who chooses to spend their lives with people who will have good days but will never be healthy.

I do not think my husband spends much time thinking about this, or wishing people understood the pressure and responsibility of illness. But from my perspective, I think it would be hard for anyone in his position. Because for as many people there are who ask me how I am doing and how I am feeling, far fewer stop to ask him how he’s doing with all of this, how he’s feeling. I am the patient, so I am afforded the empathy and the queries.

And so in the background stands the person most responsible for all the days when I can safely tuck my illness away underneath invisibility, and no matter what I can hide from outside eyes, it will always be visible to him.

(Even when I wish it wasn’t.)

Individual symptoms and diseases are less important than the fact that whatever is wrong with someone directly influences the people in his or her life. With that in mind, and all the other healthy people involved in relationships with patients of any chronic illness, I want to point out that the Well Spouse Association’s 19th Annual Conference is happening this October. For more information, click here.

Food is Love

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I met John exactly two weeks after I was diagnosed with celiac disease. At the time, I was just as apprehensive about the whole situation as he was, though we manifested it in different ways. Our first date—while wonderful—included several renditions of the following:

“Are you sure you don’t mind if I have some bread? I don’t have to…I can even ask the waitress to take it away if it’s bothering you.”

“No, it’s fine. I don’t mind. Just because I can’t eat it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.”

And back and forth we went, both trying to make the other one comfortable and not exactly sure how to do that.

He told me later that of all my health problems, celiac disease was the only one that scared him initially—he loved eating out so much and wondered if we’d have enough in common. Naturally, the irony of that statement is that it turned out to be food that brought us together, and food that helped him bring me back to myself.

That night I ordered a salad. I didn’t want to be the “that girl,” the one who only eats salad, especially on a first date, but I was too nervous to try anything else on the menu. Grilled chicken over greens? Now that was a dish I knew was gluten-free.

We both have a lot more confidence now.

Going gluten-free was certainly life-altering, but I had so much other stuff on at that point in my life—I was in and out of the hospital several weeks a month with respiratory infections, and had also just gotten officially diagnosed with PCD and bronchiectasis, which were pretty serious and life-changing events on their own. I was adjusting to new medications, dealing with a lot of lung-related complications, and had only recently started having chest PT twice a day, a huge transition all on its own.

With so many substantial changes and serious illness all at once, eating salad for lunch and dinner and yogurt for breakfast was an easy way to stick to the GF diet without investing too much time and energy that I didn’t have. Plus, as a single girl living in an apartment the size of a large suitcase, less groceries and cookery meant more space to live.

And then we had our second date, and our third, and suddenly I was going to Italian and Malaysian and Mediterranean restaurants, and ordering a garden salad wasn’t cutting it anymore. John loves trying new things, and I wanted to enjoy dining as much as he did—and, obviously, I wanted him to enjoy dining with me. I started asking questions about meals and learning the best way to approach servers with my allergy concerns.

And something else happened—we began cooking meals together. John would print out GF recipes he’d found online and we’d go to the huge grocery store near his apartment. Left to my own devices, my shopping cart still consisted of lots of lettuce and some organic soup, but we branched out together: gluten-free flours for apple pies, cornmeal for polenta pizza, spices for homemade Indian food and fresh vegetables for stir-fry. I began to look forward to cooking the way I had when I was younger; John’s creativity was contagious.

Before I knew it, I was eating hot food again on a regular basis. I was also finally starting to feel better—my energy was improved from the GF diet, and my lung infections were less severe and my time in the hospital decreased as a result of my new treatments. Soon, I noticed another change, something I hadn’t seen during all those long months of being in the hospital and being preoccupied with all the adjustments I had to make: I was happy.

We’ve been married a year and a half now, and we’ve done even more adjusting. John no longer eats exclusively gluten-free meals in our home—he no longer worries he should, and I no longer worry that he’s worrying. Some nights, he has ravioli and I make brown rice pasta; other nights we have naturally gluten-free risotto or roasted chicken or tuna steaks.

For this Valentine’s Day, John made our plans a few weeks ago. He selected a restaurant we’d always wanted to try that had a special pre-set menu for the occasion. He shot me an e-mail:

“There are a bunch of options for you that are safe, I checked. The menu is attached. What do you think, do you want to go out to dinner?”

This Valentine’s Day I think just might try the grilled ostrich skewers…you’ve got to live a little, right?

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A Relationship in Numbers

As some of you who have read previous posts may know, I have been thinking a lot about numbers and statistics lately—what they mean, how they define us, and, more importantly, how they fail to capture what cannot be so easily quantified.

In digging through research for my book proposal, I unwittingly came across the following statistic: The divorce rate in marriages where chronic illness is present is over 75 percent.
(see http://www.mychronicillness.com/invisibleillness/statistics.htm.

Now, I am not here to debate the accuracy of these statistics or discuss the methodology behind them, but they did make me stop and think. I was told recently I had a 75 percent chance of not having children on my own, so I approached this statistic with the same question: How do you know if you’ll be in that lucky 25 percent?

Seventy-five percent of marriages where chronic illness is present do not last. That is an overwhelming number to me, and it might be misleading. People divorce for all sorts of reasons, and it doesn’t necessarily mean there is a cause and effect relationship between chronic illness and divorce. It could be one of many mitigating factors, but looking at the statistic, it’s not possible to weed that out. But certainly between lost income due to sickness, high medical bills, loss of identity, pain, frustration, etc, there are a lot of ways to look at how chronic illness could be implicated in these findings.

Just as with my fertility issue, I don’t think there’s any way to know how to be part of that 25 percent except to try. The odds obviously don’t speak in our favor, but that’s why yet again I am glad that I don’t put too much stock in statistics.

One would think that the stress and tension in marriages would increase with the number of illnesses a person has or the number of people in the marriage who have illnesses—so perhaps a marriage where both spouses have multiple illnesses would really be on the losing side of the odds, right?

But maybe not. Maybe we can look at this from the complete opposite direction. Consider the case of my parents. They married in their early twenties, both believing they were fairly healthy. At 26, my father was misdiagnosed as having muscular dystrophy, a misdiagnosis that lasted seven years and whose toxic steroid treatment left him a diabetic. When he was 32, he had a cancer-ridden kidney removed, the tumor spurred on by the rare neuromuscular disease he’d actually had the entire time (polymyositis). When he was 39, he had a heart attack and an angioplasty. When he was 43, his polymyositis relapsed and he’s been on chemotherapy ever since to try and control it (14 years). Last month, he had a cardiac stent implanted because he had several blockages.

He’s a regular Lazarus in the flesh, no? So how did my mother stand it all these years? Let’s add in the fact the she’s been sick for over two decades herself. She has severe arthritis and degenerative joint disease. She’s had several major reconstructive joint surgeries, has gotten to the point where she’s needed a wheelchair, and is in constant searing nerve pain from her fused spine and crushed discs.

And yet with all the serious illness, the near-death experiences, the years of pain and setbacks and stress and frustration, they have one of the best marriages I have witnessed. They are loyal, supportive and loving towards each other, and understand and anticipate each other’s needs perfectly. I think this is because they have both suffered a lot and therefore can empathize with each other so well. There is no room for anger or resentment because they are too focused on each other’s best interest.

Maybe the more illnesses you have the more you learn to adapt and cope. Maybe when someone you love suffers, you understand your own suffering better and can put it in perspective. Maybe when you’ve been asked to face difficult truths and grim statistics so many times and have always beaten them, you begin to really believe that no matter how bad things are, there is seriously nothing the two of you can’t handle. Maybe you learn that yes, you will suffer losses and frustrations that most people will never begin to imagine, but you also learn that hope will never abandon you altogether, either.

But maybe if we’re playing the numbers game, my parents are just plain lucky they landed in that elusive 25 percent?

Not a chance. They are there because they earned it.

So I have two choices—I can look at the numbers and feel overwhelmed, or I can look at my parents and know what is possible even under extraordinary circumstances.

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What Bridal Boot Camp Didn’t Teach Me: How to be a Chronic Wife

When I got engaged, my mother gave me her yellowed copy of the Better Homes and Garden’s bride-to-be handbook. It was a nostalgic gesture since her mother had bought it for her, and much of the advice was charmingly anachronistic: gelatin molds were not in our meal plans, and I didn’t see myself having time before we both headed out the door each morning to arrange a multi-course breakfast, complete with freshly-cut flowers.

So the hardcover handbook made its way to bookcase, and a slew of bridal magazines soon took over the coffee table. I had no end of advice on how to choose dresses, where to go for a honeymoon, and what I should look for in florists. At my church’s marriage prep course, we spent a few evenings with strangers discussing our finances, spirituality, and sexuality. Slightly awkward, yes, but helpful.

Armed with all this engagement ammunition, I thought I’d covered all the bases. But what I didn’t stop to think about was exactly how I would approach being a Chronic Wife, and all the adjustments that entailed—and of all the roles and responsibilities my new life would demand, this was one of the most significant.

I’d gotten the role of Chronic girlfriend down well. There had been the initial hesitations—will he get scared off by all this?—and the pivotal breakthrough moments—realizing I liked having him there when I recovered from lung surgery and didn’t need to hide my realities from him. I loved that I had found someone who accepted me, medical calamities and all.

From the beginning, illness was a part of our relationship. Sounds obvious, yes, but it wasn’t always that easy to be forthcoming. Before we’d said “I love you” we’d battled through some scary infections and complicated procedures, so I knew we had what it took to face things together in the long term.

The hard part for me was that I was used to being the one in charge of my health, whether that meant deciding when to call the doctor or go to the hospital, deciding how many work-related projects to take on, or dealing with a new diagnosis. I turned to my family when I needed support or advice, because both my parents had been sick my entire life and understood my situation so well and my brothers were more than used to thinking in terms of chronic illness.

But now I needed to work John into this equation, terminally endearing and shockingly healthy John. On one level, I needed to break away from my habit of dealing with issues or making decisions on my own or with my parents. As my husband, he needed to be the one I turned to for this, just as I turned to him with everything else. He was willing and able, and I had to trust him with that one last piece of vulnerability.

But this was about more than whom I should consult when faced with a medical decision. On a deeper level, it meant realizing that each decision I made affected him, too. It wasn’t just about me anymore, or how much I wanted what I did to define me, not what I had.

If I took on too much work and my adrenal depletion worsened, he was the one who had to pick up the extra slack, whether that meant folding all the clothes I’d meant to finish, ferrying me around to do errands when I was too weak to drive, or skipping events we’d planned on because I couldn’t get out of bed. If I didn’t slow down when I had a respiratory infection and it lingered, it was John who spent nights sitting in a chair next to my hospital bed, sick with worry and exhausted.

Of course, I can’t always control when I have bad days—they are simply part of chronic illness—or when I get infections that won’t respond to medications and I need to be hospitalized. My husband understands that, just as he understands my need to keep pushing. But he’s helped me find a balance between the two.

What I can control are things like staying on top of my daily chest physiotherapy, making realistic decisions when committing to events or making plans when I am not feeling well, and pacing myself when it comes to figuring out how many writing classes I should teach each semester or how many freelance gigs I can juggle at once. The “old” me jumped at every opportunity without thinking, so eager to prove to myself that being sick didn’t mean I couldn’t do everything I wanted to do, and the old me often lived with the serious consequences of that.

I wasn’t going to drag John into that same old cycle.

The married me still has that impulse to jump each and every time I see a great writing gig, another section of a class opens up that I can teach, or I think of some new independent project I just have to start. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. The difference is now I actually stop to consider the ramifications on my health and my marriage.

It’s good to turn to him when I make a decision, but even better to consider what my decisions mean for him before I make them at all.