Heroes Not Zombies

The long marks on this tree were caused by a lightning strike.

Although struck by lightning, this tree didn’t die, it survived. But it survives changed. The marks of the strike become part of the beauty and uniqueness of its bark.

Illness is like that.

Stuff happens. Bacteria are inhaled or swallowed, bones are broken, hearts are broken. Often we blame these external events or stimuli for our illnesses. We say we have an infection when our bodies develop a fever, pain, inflammation in response to bacteria or viruses. In fact we give the infection the name of the bacteria or virus – we say the patient has “E Coli”, or “TB”, or “measles”, despite the fact that most people who inhale or swallow that particular “bug” might not actually develop any fever, pain or inflammation. Thinking this way externalises the illness. It’s something that happens to us and we are the victims.

But it’s more complicated than that. The particulars of our illnesses are the results of our responses, our adaptive responses, to these events, or, more commonly in chronic illnesses, to multiple, often long distant factors/events. Not everyone with the same diagnosis will have the same symptoms, and certainly no two people with the same diagnose will narrate an identical story of their experience of this illness.

Understanding that illness emerges from within our lives changes the power balance. We reject the victim mindset and open up the possibility that this experience of illness presents us with an opportunity to learn something about who we are, what’s important to us, and how we adapt to the changes in our lives.

We are changed as a result of these responses. Kat Duff, in “The Alchemy of Illness”, puts it beautifully –

Our bodies remember it all: our births, the delights and terrors of a lifetime, the journeys of our ancestors, the very evolution of life on earth………in fact, every experience, from the sight of a field of daisies to the sudden shock of cold water, leaves a chemical footprint in the body, shimmering across the folds of the cortex like a wave across water, altering our attitudes, expectations, memories, and moods ever so slightly in a continual process of biological learning.