Health- stagnant
If there is one thing that someone with a chronic illness is good at it is talking themselves out of going to the ER.
I can't count how many times my friends or I have that conversation with ourselves...
"Do I really need to go? Will it do any good? Should I go to the ER now or just call the Doctor in the morning? Well, it is morning and I really don't feel like calling the Doctor's office, the receptionist never gets it right and they never call back anyway, if I am not better by tonight I will just go to the ER..." and repeat...It would be so much easier if we could just go over a list of questions and at the end add up all the ones we answered yes and the number would tell us if we needed to go to the ER or if we should wait until morning.
The problem with such a checklist is that it would place huge liability on the person that created the checklist and open them up to lawsuits, even if the person repeated over and over that the checklist is for informational use only and should not take the place of a Physicians advice.
Quite often those with chronic illness instead will rely on their friends and family to 'talk them into going', that way if they really needed to be there their friend or family member helped them and if not (in other words, if it was a 'wasted' trip) then the blame can be placed on the person that talked them into going in... taking away personal responsibility.
This might seem like a cold way of looking at it, but when you really think about it, it makes a lot of sense.
The person with the chronic illness always has first and foremost in their mind the cost of treatment, the fact that someone else must take their own personal time to take them in and that a trip to the ER is not a fix, but a band-aid on the problem. That is a lot of pressure to be feeling when you are already feeling rotten.
Chronic illness takes away many of life's choices... you often cannot make plans because you never know when a flare or attack will strike so you live from moment to moment never knowing what is coming. You cannot eat the foods you love, cannot do the things you love to do and when the illness is invasive on basic needs of life (eating, drinking, breathing) you can't even participate in normal social activities without having to prepare for every eventuality.
You get used to having no say in your medical needs and for this reason you have a hard time trying to decide when you need to be seen... often putting off treatment (such as IV hydration) until it reaches a critical point because it comes on so slowly, building day after day and you actually get used to feeling bad. It becomes your 'normal' and you think that you just have to live with it.
This is something I struggle with (though the 180 mile round trip to the ER adds to my decision making process) and after much thought I have decided on a way to determine if I need to go to an ER or not.
If someone else were to ask me if they should go and they were experiencing what I am, would I suggest that they go?
This is my new litmus test... if I would tell someone else to go if they felt like I do at that moment then I have already answered my own question.
Part of being your own best advocate is to remember that you have to treat yourself as well as you would tell a friend to treat themselves.
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