It is 2014 and with a new sense of positive energy and joy, I am reworking my blog to focus on how to live with lupus (or any other autoimmune disease) in as positive and joyful way as possible.  (I will pause here as sufferers either gasp in indignation at the previous sentence or perhaps fall off their chairs in frustrated laughter).

Seriously, when first diagnosed I was in complete denial and, although I admired and believed my physicians diagnosis, I thought that just as with all previous challenges in life, lupus could be overcome with sheer will power and by pushing through the pain.  Was I wrong!  The diagnosis of any serious and chronic autoimmune disease is life-changing and no amount of wishing, praying, will power, pushing through the pain, etc., can modify its life-altering effects.  Elizabeth Kubler-Ross developed an analysis of the stages of grief that every major life change, including the diagnosis of a chronic and serious autoimmune disease, brings to its sufferer:  the five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

For years, I went through the stages over and over and usually in a different order:  denial, depression, bargaining, anger, and acceptance.  I reached acceptance only recently.  Denial still rears its ugly head at times but depression has subsided to a bad memory.  I don’t bother bargaining anymore as it isn’t effective and I find that acceptance is not as difficult as one might first imagine.  Anger is just too exhausting to consider so I avoid it.

How is it possible to come to acceptance and even, dare we consider, a positive attitude towards our constant and daily struggle with a serious and chronic autoimmune disease?  Well, in short, what is the alternative?  Be in denial and die early by attempting to live as we did prior to the illness?  Be angry and drive away our friends and family?  Remain in dark depression and spend the remainder of our days dismissing the life we still have? 

No one wants to become ill.  No one chooses to develop a life-altering illness.  No one plans to fall flat on their face in the prime of their life from an illness.  But it happens.  Good health is a blessing, NOT something that anyone should take for granted.  I enjoyed good health throughout the majority of my working years, and as I raised 2 children as a divorced parent (from age 23 to age 44), worked full-time the entire time as well as attended college to advance towards my B.A.  When I developed full-blown autoimmune disease in 2000, I was not prepared (whoever is?).  Hey, I was a ‘modern woman’.  I was bringing home the bacon and also frying it up in the pan!  That is until lupus knocked me on my proverbial butt.

It took years for me to realize that the development of an autoimmune disease was ‘just’ another of life’s challenges.  Of course, it was a humiliating, debilitating, depressing challenge but every one of life’s challenges asks us to make choices in how we deal with them.  Growing up was a challenge but it was relatively easy to manage.  Marriage and the birth of 2 children was a challenge but it was one that I enjoyed.  Divorce was devastating but because I was young, healthy, and able, I managed to move forward.  The development of my autoimmune illness was different.  The healthy body I had taken for granted suddenly failed me and I was devastated, fearful, in denial, and depressed.  If a persons’ body fails them, what future could they possibly have?

Many, many people live full and happy lives in bodies that are not ‘fully normal’.  As I came to acceptance of my ‘new’ life, I realized this fact and was at once grateful for the prior years of good health that I had enjoyed and humbled that the human body can fail so dramatically but can still function and allow life to continue.