Today I attended a webinar about the patient experience from the perspective of hospital staff. It was interesting, kind of like when teachers would talk in front of me in high school without realizing I was there. (That time I was sitting in the front row of an empty classroom after school in case I needed help from the teacher, it was not my fault the complainer didn’t see me before she started complaining.) It gave me insight into how the school worked that few students had.
It was a different perspective, which is always useful. If nothing else, it’s an exercise to expand the way I think about things. Changing or expanding your perspective can help get you past difficult spots, pull you out of familiar and not-so-happy paths your brain tends to travel. Out of sheer boredom, my brain has been wandering some of those paths more frequently than pre-pandemic.
One of those paths is, “Which is worse, chronic or acute illness?” Chronic and acute health issues are very different beasts, and bring very different perspectives. I began my healthcare journey with an acute illness. It was unknown and awful and scary and painful. And then, three weeks later, it was done. There were significant lingering effects, but even those were gone in less than two years, except for some misaligned muscles in my back that cause me to need physical therapy every five years or so. Not too bad. But I was lucky. Acute illnesses are acute because either you recover or it kills you. Survival of an acute illness brings a distinct perspective that you are not indestructible but you are a survivor.
Then I transitioned to chronic. Chronic everything. Out of the eleven systems in the human body, I have three that are undamaged. So far.
Chronic resembles acute at the point of diagnosis, but there the similarity ends. Pretty soon it settles into a long slog. Flare-ups become expected, even predictable. You adapt and become accustomed to the particular rhythms of your condition. Every once in a while, your body changes and you have to tweak your treatment, but little surprises you after a certain number of years (this time period is different for everyone). New developments are either something you were aware could happen or make sense when you think about how the condition affects your body. Chronic brings its own perspective – that you are resilient. You can take the constant barrage of symptoms and you are still standing. Or still lying. In bed. It counts.
When I think about it, which I would rather have, I never have an answer. Once in a while I think I would prefer acute because it would be nice to spend some time not wholly dependent on devices and drugs. But since I would rather live, maybe chronic is better. At least I know what I’m doing.
I know this is a bit of a pointless exercise. Circular reasoning rarely bears fruit.
It is not pointless to think about all of the various pieces from the perspective of the other side. It reminds me of how much things have changed even as the conditions haven’t, at least at the most basic levels. If acute is worse, I’ve already dealt with a pretty bad version of that. If chronic is worse, I already have decades behind me. I can handle the decades in front of me.
I suppose the confinement of the pandemic has given all of us more time than we ever wanted to just sit and think about stuff. I have spent way too much time chasing this particular question. Every time I have dragged myself out with the help of a little perspective. It’s a gift.
NOTE: Of course, then there are the chronic pain patients who have the worst of both – the sharpness and debilitation of pain, as well as the frustration of a road with no end. And now there is COVID-19, which seems to be an acute illness that sometimes becomes its own set of chronic conditions.