Acute versus Chronic Illness

People get sick. If they don’t get better on their own, they go to a doctor. Diagnosis is not too difficult. Treatment is ordered and the patient recovers, or in some cases, dies. Chronic illness can start slowly and take years to diagnose. Chronic illness does not go away on its own, in fact, it never goes away. Chronic illness may not be a death sentence, but it sure is a life sentence!

If the bad news is a life sentence with our illness, what’s the good news? The good news is that we can control our reaction to the illness. The good news is that we can create a new normal for ourselves. We don’t have to be our illness. Norman Cousins sums it up in these words, “Never deny a diagnosis, but do deny the negative verdict that might go with it.”