You are Too Young to Be That Sick!

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At the age of twenty-four, a thousand miles away from my family, living in a new city, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Over a period of four weeks and about eight doctor’s visits, I finally found a physician who listened to me explain my symptoms and in less than two days I had a diagnosis.

Despite the terms “chronic” and “forever” I felt relieved to know the label that described my chronic pain. Few of my friends, however, shared my enthusiasm for a diagnosis. The managers at my office were more concerned about the fact that I wasn’t wearing heels to work anymore, making me look less professional.

They quickly threw comments about such as “You’re too young to feel this bad!” Most people were confused about the difference between rheumatoid arthritis and typical degenerative arthritis that our grandparents may suffer from. They ignorantly said things like, “There is no way that you can have arthritis yet.” Those that did try to offer sympathy compared my fatigued and pain to their sports injuries. “Yeah, I have some arthritis in my knee from football. You just have to keep pushing through the pain.” It wasn’t unusual to see their comments accompanied by the wave of their hand or their rolling eyes.

When you are faced with a chronic illness in your twenties, all of the typical decisions you should be making are quickly put on hold. Up until now, you were considering what kind of education to pursue, your career aspirations, relationships, and even where you will live. All these are put aside, however, as you are forced to make immediate decisions that impact the rest of your life. Things like how well you accept (or do not) accept the diagnosis of your condition, which medications to try, when side effects are worth the risk and when they are not, and how to find the right physician. While friends are deciding which party to go to we’re at home trying to make sense out of our latest lab test results, weighing our options for alternative treatments, and deciding to have a good cry or just go to bed and hold back the tears one more night.

I did my best to make well thought out decisions, each of them based on thorough research, some instinct, and of course, “worse case scenario” situations. So when I heard someone flippantly tell me, “You’re too young to be diagnosed with that illness” it felt like a slap to my intelligence. I recognized it as a passing ignorant comment, but it it my heart deep anyway. Did they assume that I was ignorant or that I too easily accepted the doctor’s diagnosis? They comments implied that I wasn’t being assertive enough and that I needed to go back to the doctor to get the “real” diagnosis (of an illness that could be cured in a few weeks with just a pill.) I couldn’t really be that sick, after all, because I “looked so good.”

Laurie Edwards, a woman who grew up with a chronic illness as a child is the author of ‘Life Disrupted: Getting Real About Chronic Illness in Your Twenties and Thirties,’ In her book she explains, “However infuriating and irrational such comments are, they only have the power to define or validate our conditions if we allow that to happen. There are all sorts of reasons why people find it easy to scorn or deny illness, especially in younger people who ‘should’ look and act healthy – fear, ignorance, intolerance, to name some.”

The saturation of advertisements on television and in magazine for prescription medications has helped legitimize some illness, such as rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. There are downsides, however. For example, everyone considers her self an expert on the, plus they make their assumptions about how well the drugs work based on the ads. The advertisements show people with debilitating illnesses (healthy models, actually) who are astonishingly now able to water ski or join their kids on 300-foot water slides. While a certain percentage of people may experience remission, the majority of us are happy to be able to get up out of bed without assistance, get dressed, and drive to the grocery store. Ads and commercials fail to alert people that though an illness may be temporarily controlled, they are usually associated with immense daily chronic pain.

With any chronic illness, most of which are invisible illnesses, there will be people who will be skeptical about how much your life is impacted by your condition. When you cope with an illness while in your twenties or thirties, and you “look healthy” they will have even more hurdles to jump over to get the fact that for you to feel better requires more than an attitude adjustment or a daily walking regimen.

Instant download of 200 Ways to Encourage a Chronically Ill Friend from “Beyond Casseroles” by Lisa Copen when you signup for HopeNotes invisible illness ezine at Rest Ministries. Lisa is the coordinator of Invisible Illness Awareness

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