Why Having A Chronic Illness Prepared Me For Quarantine
My living in a dystopian society started long before March of this year. At ten years old I began having symptoms of chronic illness and nothing in my life has been the same since. After years of testing, trying, poking, prodding, and speculating I finally landed on a diagnosis for what plagued my body.
Due to my diagnosis, half of my high school career was spent online, I learned the ins and outs of the insurance game, ineptitudes of the healthcare industry, and nurses were my hero long before the media recognized their sacrifice. A stay at home order is my normal life 50% of the time.
Here’s a list of 6 things a stay at home expert recommends to ease your shelter in place pains:
1. You are going to be exhausted
I’ve heard from many that they thought their ‘coronation’ would lead to an ample amount of time to sleep, eat well, do yoga, and catch up on all those house projects that they’ve been putting off since last year. So why is everyone finding themselves exhausted and severely undermotivated?
Staying home becomes monotonous, uninspiring, and lonely. Isolation takes a toll on your physical health and simply walking up the stairs becomes an exhausting task. Be gentle with yourself at this time. The mandate you go outside once a day if possible. Move your body in a small way. Stretch, do a 10-minute workout.
Try your best to keep a normal sleep-wake schedule, but most of all just recognize your body is going through something it has never experienced before and it is normal to be completely drained after a long day of doing nothing.
2. Accept Your Limitations
Welcome to the life of limitation! Whether it is government implemented stay at home orders or physical bodily restrictions you are now living in a new set of limitations. Everything you once knew was ripped from your normal routine and schedule. Do not try to proceed with business as usual. It is going to cause you more stress and anxiety than it is worth. Take in your surroundings, assess your new normal, and make lemonade out of lemons.
A mantra I have lived by the past 10 chronically ill years of my life has been “Living a life of limitation need not limit the life I get to live.” I believe, even in this crazy time that is still true. The fact of the matter is creativity flourishes with a healthy dose of limitation.
Artists only have three colors, musicians only have seven notes, architects only have a few basic shapes. Limitations need not limit our experience. Take inventory of what you do have and make that lemonade.
3. Grieve, grieve well.
Everyone on the entire planet is experiencing loss in one form or another. Too much too quickly changed and it left us shell shocked. Graduations and proms canceled, travel gone, dates postpones, visits turned virtual, everyone is experiencing loss of something. Lucky for you the life of the chronically Ill is never knowing if the experience will get to happen the way it was planned so I’ve got some advice.
Grieve it. It’s heartbreaking these times and to sit around feeling sorry for yourself all day, or ignoring those floods of emotions with a simple “I’m so fortunate to be safe and comfortable right now” is only going to add to your exhaustion. Welcome to a crash course to acceptance. Let yourself feel angry and upset and then march right on to make that lemonade.
4. Celebrate everything
Chronic illness has taught me to celebrate everything. It’s important in a time of isolation for your brain to receive positive feedback and recognition. Finish that never-supposed-to-be-online class of yours? Celebrate it. It’s your birthday? Celebrate it? Today supposed to be your graduation? Celebrate it. Make it all day without forgetting to unmute yourself on a zoom conference before talking? Celebrate it. Big or small, celebrate.
Bake a cake, light some candles, have a dance party, call up some friends, make decorations or cook a special meal. Just celebrate. You need to remind yourself you are doing your best. You need, as silly as it may feel, recognition of your accomplishments and achievement of goals. No matter how big or small they may be. COVID may have canceled gathering, but it does not cancel celebrating.
5. Stretchy Pants
Pretty self-explanatory. You’re home for a while. Invest in some good comfy clothes. Just don’t forget to throw on that old dress in the back of your closet every once in a while.
6. This too shall pass
This quarantine isn’t going to last forever. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Some days will be better than others and that is just how this rollercoaster goes. It feels unfair. It feels confusing. It sucks.
Just remember when life returns to something that more resembles how the world used to turn, there are still going to be people like me who are vulnerable long after the mass quarantines pass. Until there is a safe vaccine, people within this category of “vulnerable” are going to be living a quarantine for the foreseeable future. Now we all have been there.
We all see what that kind of isolation feels like and how difficult it can be to “do nothing”. We all now know how helpless one can feel when the best they can do is simply stay home. So when this too passes, I ask that you remember this experience and proceed forward with a new perspective.
I don’t know what the world will look like in a few months but it is my hope that it looks a lot more like compassion. That we’ve moved toward kindness, and in this process of slowing down we’ve begun to see those around us who have struggled long before corona and will continue to long after. This too shall pass, and I hope when it does, we continue to go together.
Thanks for reading…
