Realities of a Chronic Illness
As I struggle yet again with a out-of-whack thyroid, I am slowly but surely coming to grips with having a chronic illness. My thyroid will never again work normally and I will have to take replacement hormone for the rest of my life. It is amazingly difficult to accept this fact, especially since there is a lot of confusing information out there, as I have outlined before. I would love to share with others but it seems like most of what’s out there is disturbingly baloney-influenced. Of course, there’s Mary Shomon’s advocacy, which seems to boil down too often to “Abbott is out to get you.” But much worse is an online group that welcomes alien abduction stories if the person believes that the abduction caused the hypothyroidism. Why is it so difficult for people to accept “I don’t know”?!? We don’t really know what caused most hypothyroidism. Sure, in my case, it’s caused by an autoimmune attack but no one knows why the body all the sudden decided to attack itself. No, aliens were certainly not involved! It is so absolutely unhelpful if people keep mixing nonsense in with the help or information! The most helpful, scientifically-grounded book I’ve found so far, is Maureen Pratt’s book. Unfortunately, she is proposing prayer and meditation as helpful tools for dealing with this disease. Sigh. Fairy tales seem to creep in no matter what. Note added May 10, 2010: I think this condemnation was too harsh. I think Pratt’s pushing of prayer and meditation as part of dealing with a disease felt very unhelpful when I wrote this post – I was feeling miserable. Now, feeling better, thanks to an adjustment in dosage, I realize that prayer and meditation might be helpful for some people when they are learning to deal with the effects of a chronic illness on their life. Just keep in mind that neither can be used as a replacement (Pratt does not claim that). They can be an adjunct to your treatment, though.
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I did learn something about the bioequivalency debate. It’s not necessarily that the generics are not bioequivalent to the brand-name drugs but there is no control that their potency is consistent enough from batch to batch to prevent too much fluctuation. Fluctuation in the level of replacement hormone can contribute to the recurrence of symptoms, as I’ve found out. Of course, I am not sure if the flaring up of my symptoms are due to switching generics but, at this point, that seems to be the most likely culprit.
Okay, this is my gripe of the day written through a bit of brain fog, so I apologize if it doesn’t make as much sense…
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Thanks for clarifying, RedKiwi, and sorry if I misunderstood you! It’s been a year-and-a-half or even longer since I’ve read the book, so I am not exactly sure what Pratt’s claims were regarding prayer or meditation. If Pratt said that prayer and meditation can help with managing the side-effects of a chronic illness, I think my condemnation of that as “fairy tales” was indeed a bit too harsh.
I don’t want to call you names or whatever, you misunderstand me. I apologize for earlier, I blew a fuse too easily.
When I read what you said in regards to meditation/prayer I thought of the following scenario:
Three people look at a painting, one says he doesn’t like it, the second says she likes it… then the third one says it’s beautiful/ugly. The first two are stating their opinions in relation to themselves, the third one asserts it as universal truth.
Probably not even what you meant.
For some reason that sparked me to reply, sadly I lack that motivation now as I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore. I am just tired of this manichaeistic approach people take, whether it’s from the absolute believer or complete skeptic.
I have not used it to treat my hypothyroidism and I cannot see how it possibly could help… I suppose it could help with the stress of having a chronic illness but what would help even more with that would be things like universal health care… Go ahead and call me ignorant for not wanting to spend time on learning something for which I absolutely cannot see a benefit. I can see the benefit for meditation for stress reduction, for example. I was part of a Buddhist meditation group for years and have taken several classes, including one on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s version of mindfulness meditation. But to treat hypothyroidism?!? I would call it foolish to run after every possible cure that someone suggests – that is quite a waste of time. We need to allow ourselves to dismiss things out of hand if there isn’t more evidence for it than some author suggesting it – and if my line for doing that is somewhere else than yours so be it. Go ahead and call me ignorant and foolish for that.
I wasn’t so much angry as disappointed when I wrote the above post. I’m not saying you should (read: need to) do it, I’m merely stating that dismissing it off-hand is folly. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not even one to practice meditation.
Wow! RedKiwi – something I wrote must’ve really made you angry! Pretty harsh words: ignorant, imprisoned, limited. I have no idea what all of that has to do with the realities of a chronic illness. I always find it funny when proponents of meditation seem so imbalanced and rather presumptuous (unless I try things their way, I must be ignorant and self-limiting). Maybe you can reread your comment and see how much of that applies to yourself.
To me, the problem of induction points to a simple reality of life: We can never know things for certain. Despite Kant’s mental acrobatics that were supposed to restore knowledge to science, we still don’t know with 100% certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow. Science does not deliver absolute truths.
It’s ignorant to assume that meditation can’t help, the problem is people just try and imitate other people’s meditation techniques and then wonder why it doesn’t do a thing: everyone has to find their own meditation style.
If you aren’t open to take everything into consideration (which means just that) then you are simply limiting yourself into a life of already engraved principles that you find comfortable. It’s a sort of invisible prison cell, you can’t get out but nothing gets in either until it’s screened for approval, unless it adheres to your limiting philosophy.
If you are only capable of accepting scientific explanations then I suggest you look into the problem of induction.
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