GRSJ 224 Blog

Being born, growing up, getting old, becoming ill and eventually die, a cliche timeline of the human life that even the most brilliant, talented of us follow.  Dr.Walker in Doyle’s Round the Red Lamp is a case in point.

Here he was, a man in the prime of life, one of the handsomest men in London, with money, fame, social success, everything at his feet, and now, without a moment’s warning, he was told that inevitable death lay before him, a death accompanied by more refined and lingering tortures than if he were bound upon a Red Indian stake.

And you are no exception. At some point of life, you will be ill.

When you are ill, I hope you maintain an optimistic outlook and a positive mood. Convince yourself that you will get better and you will. As a psychology student, I have read a handful of paper and research linking general positivity to faster recovery and other great stories.

When you are ill, I hope you take a second to imagine that you are not ill. Imagine that your symptoms are normal feelings experienced by everyone.   After all, illness is more or less a social construct, one that is subject to cultural, political and other interested parties’ influence. Your diagnosis should not affect you in any negative way.

When you are ill, I hope you don’t blindly follow health advice from the media. Scientific evidence can be presented in drastically different ways. Trust your doctor and believe in yourself. Get well soon.

Ideally, when I am ill, I stay in bed and cuddle my teddy bear, read a novel that is completely irrelevant to my study, or watch my favorite TV shows,  all day long guilt free. I binge on my favorite hot beverage and whatever food I crave. When I am sick, I have my eyes on the subtle beautiful things that I generally ignore, like the late afternoon sunshine that light up the dusk in the air. Much similar to what Woolf wrote in “On Being Ill” with much more sophisticated diction:

We float with the sticks on the stream; helter-skelter with the dead leaves on the lawn, irresponsible and disinterested and able, perhaps for the first time for years, to look round, to look up—to look, for example, at the sky.”

In reality, most of the time that is, when I am sick I find myself without the energy to read or the appetite to eat, even drinking water becomes a task that takes tremendous courage because swallowing feels like tearing out flesh. I spend much time lying in the bed, in a limbo like state, with just enough consciousness to feel the pain, which prevents me from falling asleep. At first, I try to let my immune system fight on its own and avoid taking unnecessary medications. However, after some time, I most likely will shove down a bunch of pills just hoping to get better as soon as possible. If my condition is so serious that I need to see a doctor, I generally do some research on the internet about the course of treatment, so I have a better understanding and some preparation of what the doctor is going to throw at me. This, perhaps, is not such a bad idea. After all, possibly more than two hundred thousand people die because human errs. Better to be safe than sorry.