Catastrophizing

I started the Christmas Crud early this year, just before Thanksgiving. For most of my life, I got sick on Christmas and stayed sick until Easter or later. I noticed that other people didn’t get sick and stay sick for so long, so I figured I was just flawed somehow. Staying home and resting never fixed it, so I learned to keep pushing. In 2003, however, the annual Christmas Crud got really bad, bad enough to land me in the hospital for 14 days, bad enough to place me on disability for 4 years. And, thanks be to God, bad enough to finally get the diagnosis of systemic lupus erythematosus with major organ involvement. I am in remission now, chemically induced, but I will take any remission I get!

And then came this year’s Christmas Crud. At first, I brushed it off. It got better and worse and better and worse, then it got nasty. Antibiotics didn’t touch it. On Christmas Eve, I sounded like a cat gacking up a hairball and I am sure that disrupted the congregation’s worship, even though I continued to play through the gacking. On Monday, I was truly miserable and for the first time in a long time, I began to catastrophize. I took deep breaths to try and figure out if I had pleurisy or pericarditis again. I watched my urine for bubbles that could indicate a nephritis flare. I imagined the worst and hoped it would not happen.

Here is the catastrophe scenario. The lupus flared, you will lose your jobs, you will crash, your life is effectively over. BAM! Even though I know better intellectually, even though I have learned to use cognitive therapy to ward of this kind of thinking, it crept in. When you live with chronic illness, it’s easy to take every little change in your health and body and imagine that is a bell weather, a sign of the beginning of the end. But awareness can head off this catastrophizing. If you are aware that you catastrophize, then you can be ready and replace your thinking and change how you feel. Plan ahead. Have replacement thoughts ready.

And by the way, I am a lot better now!