Although a cure for any illness sounds like the logical path to spend your time and energy working to find, sometimes constantly looking for a cure can create some negative experiences.
If you have a chronic illness, it is exactly that: chronic. It is not acute, not short-term, and there is no cure (yet). Looking for a cure IS important, but if you are expecting a cure or putting all of your focus into finding that cure, your life may just pass right by.
While dealing with chronic illness, here are 10 reasons why you should reduce the amount of time and energy you spend on looking for a cure:
1. If there is no known cure, putting all of your eggs in one basket may leave you feeling like a failure.
2. Remission is difficult enough to achieve, but realistic. Many of these illnesses have been around a hell of a lot longer than anyone alive today, and we have yet to find a cure.
3. Chronic illness affects every individual in a different way - a universal cure for one illness is fairly far-fetched.
4. We must understand how an illness actually works in the body before we can find a cure that combats that illness. Rather than focusing on coming up with a cure, more energy could be spent on researching the effects of the disease itself.
5. If you are always waiting for a cure in order to continue living your life, what happens if no cure is found in your lifetime? Or what if a cure IS found but ends up being either inaccessible or simply does not work for your particular case?
6. Although reducing symptoms doesn't seem like it's enough, why not treat your symptoms while you look for the cure?
7. Learn to love your life exactly how it is. I know that seems much easier said than done, but if you adapt to your new normal and learn to love your life now, if a cure IS found, you will get some extra bonus years of NO symptoms, but perhaps it will create less resentment if you have already enjoyed your life.
8. The more you focus on waiting for a cure, the more time you spend feeling angry from STILL not having found one. This can lead to frustration, anger, even depression.
9. When others have tried specific treatments which have resulted in remission, if those people call those treatments 'cures', it is giving people potentially false hope.
10. Focusing on the smallest victories and the slightest progression of research will leave you feeling much more optimistic as opposed to expecting to be freed from all of your pain and suffering and risk being disappointed.
Finding a cure isn't a 'pipe dream'. Research is constantly being done to help find cures to hundreds of chronic diseases. BUT - in the meantime - if symptom treatment is the best that we can do for right now, I will take it!
This is a notion to consider: If my health never gets any better than what it is right now, what are some aspects of my life, that I DO have control over, that I can improve?
Enjoy your life while you help the search for cures to chronic illness. Don't sit and wait for an end result that you, yourself, may never experience. There has to be a balance between sacrificing your own life to find a cure and making sure to actually live your life in the process.
My greatest example of this is when I was able to do some traveling.
Was I cured?
Nope.
Did I achieve remission?
Nope.
But my symptoms were diminished enough for me to hop on a plane and head out to Europe. I still had lots of issues, but I knew that I was not cured, and that these medications would likely not last forever. As optimistic as I was, I also did not want to take the chance of the severe symptoms returning at a later date and feeling as though I had wasted the three good years that I had.
If I had not forced myself to be COMPLETELY satisfied and excited by experiencing less symptoms; if I had decided to wait for a CURE instead of taking advantage of some improved symptoms, I would not have gone, and I would have regretted it for the rest of my life.
I also want to touch on #9 specifically. Yes - there is anecdotal evidence of people being 100% cured from their chronic illness because of this treatment or that treatment. Some people swear by a diet change, a particular recreational drug, a lifestyle change, simply believing that you will get better or wishing the disease away (self-healing through positive thinking), ignoring the advice of the healthcare system, using naturopathic medications instead of pharmaceutical medications, the list goes on....
Anyone I have come across who suffers from chronic illness WANTS to be cured. You can bet that he/she has done pretty much everything in his/her power to get better. People WANT to feel better!!
So if you have heard of someone being 'cured', I guarantee that chronically ill patients have usually heard of the treatment, and have tried it already.
Just because a treatment works wonders for one person does not mean that it will work for another person.
Here is an example as an extra aside:
When I was diagnosed first with Ulcerative Colitis, I was also diagnosed with Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis. This is a severe auto-immune liver disease with no known cure. I was diagnosed not only from scans (MRI, CT, etc...), but also with bloodwork, biopsies, AND visibly confirming it while surgeons removed my large intestine. There was absolutely ZERO doubt of this diagnosis.
Yet, 7 months later, when I was opened up a second time to reverse the ileostomy and create a J-Pouch, there was no sign of this severe liver disease. 7 months earlier, my doctors had to speak with my parents about preparing for me to be on the transplant list, and after the second surgery, it had disappeared entirely. My bloodwork and scans were normal, more biopsies were taken and came back normal, and there has been no sign of that particular disease since that first few years.
So what happened?
Do I believe that I was able to wish away the disease by positive thinking?
No.
Do I think that the medication Ursodiol cured the disease?
No.
Do I believe that removing my appendix with the large intestine cured my Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis?
No.
For 8 months during those years before the PSC disappearing, I was on a routine of naturopathic medication, so do I believe that naturopathy cured me?
No.
During that year I had also decided to take more dance lessons, so do I believe that returning to the dance studio and participating in that activity cured my liver disease?
No.
The real question is - am I actually cured or have I gone into some kind of remission?
There is no sign at this moment that indicates that there ever was a liver disease... And yet ALL of the diagnostic tests had been done and had all PROVEN that yes, at that time, I had that particular liver disease.
So is it dormant and hiding out waiting to take hold of my liver at a later date? Or was I actually cured? And even if something DID cure me, without knowing 100% what the cure was, there is NO WAY that I would ever try and FORCE people to believe that they need to try any one of the above 'treatments'.
We may never find out...
But claiming that there is a cure because of anecdotal evidence is irresponsible.