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Have you ever been tempted to just pretend that the life you are living is different than the reality? If you have, you can quickly imagine a new life by just hanging out for a few minutes with a 6-year-old. Since my son seems to want loads of interaction around any scenario that is different than the one he is having. Each sentence seems to start with “Mom, let’s pretend…”

I’ve pretended to be the grocery clerk, the mailman, the chef, the librarian, the waitress, and the person at the DVD rental place.

My son has acted out the role of a stranger who approaches our front door in dark three dimensional glasses (that we got at the movies, but that he would not put on for the entire show.)

He’s has been the brave Indiana Jones and I’ve been his helpful partner.

I’ve been a gardener who comes to help trim his shrubbery.

We’ve been American Idols singing the Beach “Guys” (his words).

And I’ve repeatedly had to pretend to be frightened by fake roaches, a giant squid and rubber lizards.

There is never a dull moment around our house as we wait to see what scene he decides he wants us to play out next. He of course, claims the roles of director, producer and leading star celebrity. If he can learn to write a theme song we’ll have our own little Clint Eastwood. Course, he’d prefer to be Harrison Ford. After all, he is the start of both Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

Each scene we are assigned is never perfect; there is always something our director thinks I can improve upon, for example, screaming in fright with more enthusiasm. He makes us do it over and over. Sometimes I want Indy to take a break and go by myself a Barbie and just style her hair.

A few times after we’ve done “Take 7,” creatively depleted, I’ve said, “Mommy doesn’t want to pretend any more. Mommy isn’t scared. I don’t want to pretend to be scared any more. Go ask Daddy.”

What does this story have to do with living with a chronic illness? Illness involves a special balance of having to pretend.

There is a new commercial for rheumatoid arthritis, the illness I live with, and the commercial actually makes sense to me instead of causing me to groan. It has a split screen on the television and the actor lives her “actual life” on the left side and then (after taking the medication of course) it shows her living the life she had been living previous to her diagnosis. She crosses over from one side of the screen to the other. The right side of the screen may be as ordinary as sharing dinner with her family (no water skiing or tennis tournaments in this one thankfully.)

Sometimes we aren’t able to find any medication or treatment that can help us cross over to the side of life that we’d like to be living, but we can pretend. What do I mean?

There are times I don’t FEEL like doing anything. But you have to “pretend” you do and just go through the motions. The result may surprise you.

Take for example an outing to go fishing. When my parents visited this summer we wanted to make sure Papa got to take my son down to the little local lake and fish off the dock. During the last visit they had bought all the gear and so were completely prepared. We joyfully packed a picnic lunch and all the fishing paraphernalia and got to the lake to find that it was “closed for fishing Mondays.” I didn’t realize the fish had a Sabbath too!

So, before their visit was over, we were still going to get that fishing trip in and we ended up rushing over one night at 7 p.m. to get 20 minutes of fishing in before the lake closed at dusk. My husband came home from work and we said, “We’re going to the lake. Jump in the other car!”

Truthfully, I was sore and flaring. I would not have felt a loss if I had just stayed home. I wasn’t able to walk down to the dock where the fishing was legal and see them anyway, but I knew my son desperately wanted “the whole family” to go and I didn’t want to disappoint him. I went.

And you know what I found? A beautiful, peaceful lake that had hardly a soul on it. Just sitting on the patio deck by the tackle store was relaxing and rejuvenating and I will back there again soon, especially when I am working on my next book.

When we are dealing with a chronic illness we are given a body that seems to have a voice of its own and it is not afraid to use it, telling us things like, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, stop, it’s not safe, you really shouldn’t, just get some rest, this is not a good idea, skip it this time at least.”

It’s shrewd to know when to heed this guidance, for example you never want to push yourself during chronic post-surgical pain. But if you try to do it all, you will make your illness even worse and never learn the art of boundaries and energy conservation. And this is something you need to know to live a successful life with a chronic illness.

But you also need to know when to turn off that little voice. Too often chronic pain, especially fibromyalgia, is treated with depression medication. So make the choice to say, “Yes, why not? Go for it; It’s okay; I will be careful;” and of course, “I’ll just pretend.”

I am not advising you to avoid confronting your emotions, especially if you are coping with depression that will not subside. However, there are an increasing amount of studies around the globe that continue to show how our attitude impacts our actual health and how well we cope with illness. In one study, researchers found that people who were pessimists were 3 times more likely to have a heart attack or need to repeat their surgical heart procedures within 6 months. How you respond to your emotions does make a difference in your illness management.

There are hundreds of books that will tell you how to improve the management of your chronic illness, but you may be surprised to find that with just a few choices, you are realigning your actual life on the left side of the screen to the right side, coming closer each day to the actual life that you wanted to live.

Lisa Copen is the founder of Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week held each year in Sept and featuring a free 5-day virtual conference w/ 20 seminars w/ 20 speakers. Follow Invisible Illness Week on Twitter for cool prizes and info. Blog about invisible illness on your site, be a featured guest blogger, meet others, read articles and lots more. Make a impact today!

Topics: HEALTH | No Comments »

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