The Top Ten List for Living Well, Even While Sick

This title may read like an oxymoron. After all, if you are sick how can you live well? In honor of all who face this challenge, I offer 10 tips on how to do so.

These are from the book, You Don’t LOOK Sick, that I wrote with my physician while I was living with 3 chronic conditions—mixed connective tissue disease, interstitial cystitis, and trigeminal neuralgia. Combined, these were so debilitating I had to leave my job and go on disability. The question that arose during those dark days was, Who Can I Be Now? How do I build a meaningful life that includes long term illness? I offer 10 tips that worked for me then, and still do.

1.     Take care of yourself first. It’s not easy, especially for women, to put your needs and priorities first, but to manage a long-term illness successfully, you must learn to do so.

2.     Never, never, never give up. Even though your illness is chronic, symptoms and treatments will change. Stay engaged and keep looking for effective remedies.

3.     Learn to be honest about how you are feeling. If saying ‘I’m fine’ is on auto, turn it off and tell the truth when people are kind enough to ask, or when you need them to know. 

4.   Enroll in the School of Whatever Works. We often have biases about medical care, now is the time to these let go. Align with an open-minded, experienced medical advisor and then explore treatments, lifestyle, diet, exercise and more.

5.   Make friends with fatigue. Listen to your body and respect what it is telling you. If it helps to take an afternoon rest period, make it a daily habit.

6.   Live as a child. Kids are open, curious, non-judgmental, honest, and very good role models for this time.

7.   Step out of the box. Your old habits, beliefs, and biases may not be applicable in this new life, and new adventures may be on the horizon.

8.   Search for silver linings. There can be gifts and blessings hidden within in the trials and the pain.         

9.   Find a way to share your gifts. We all have gifts, discover the ones you can give now, even if the old ones are no longer useful.

10. Be still. It is during the still time that we can grow, find peace, and our own center.