Convalescence
Airdre Grant
This article is reprinted with the kind permission of the Australian Journal of Herbal and Naturopathic Medicine.
Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.
Susan Sontag 1988
I
have two friends who encountered strong illness. These competent, capable women were felled by lengthy, hard-to-diagnose sicknesses. The maladies had them in and out of hospitals, required them to stay in their houses, in their beds, for months.
They did not like it. They didn’ t like the feeling of powerlessness. They had to ask for and accept help, to relinquish control of their lives, stay put. They both struggled with feeling weak, frightened, and learning how to yield and accept that this was the only way through the swamp.
Both these women had entered the kingdom of the unwell.
Illness can be particularly galling for those who are used to being in charge, used to having a good degree of agency over their lives. But illness does not take instruction from the anybody, from the cleverest person to the frailest. It takes its own path, one that diagnosticians work hard to try to keep up with.
Friends and family gathered around these women, anxious, wanting to help. People prayed for them, visualised, sent healing light, provided supplements, crystals, food, herbs, gave lots and lots of excellent advice. Still the illnesses held sway. This was serious business. Modern medicine used all the tests and machines it had chasing diagnosis and treatment. Strong medicines were prescribed. Time passed and the women began to slowly recover. They both set about resuming their lives. They got out of their beds, started taking on tasks, lifting things and assuming responsibilities, only to be felled by resurgence of the weakness and body upset. Like snakes and ladders they thought they were home when whoosh, they went down a big snake and were both sent back to their beds. They tried to hurry through recovery, to‘ get back on the horse.’
Which leads me to convalescence. This vital stage of the recovery process should not be overlooked. It cannot be hurried. It must be respected. The consequences of not obeying the need for convalescence can and will be felt. Illness demands that you listen to your body. You must obey its needs. Both women were healers. One worked as a body therapist, the other a social worker. They knew the importance of convalescence. Yet as is common with many healers, they failed to take their
90 | vol31 | no2 | JATMS