'The wolf at my door'

Chronic illness and its spiritual dimensions

{Photo by ryan korpi for Scopio}

My chronic-illness crash came the day my husband fell. Three days earlier we’d driven to Willamette Falls hospital at five in the morning so a surgeon could repair his epically misshapen spine. Ed’s post-surgery recovery had proven challenging; but on this morning as he shuffled from the bedroom to the bathroom with the help of a walker, I watched as he began to shake. Then as I implored, “Don’t fall. Just don’t fall,” he went ashen and crumbled to his knees. Two hours later, the same thing happened again. Each time, I held up the weight of his body against my legs so he would not fall backwards, anchoring him, knowing that if he fell backward his pain would be severe—not to mention how it would impede his healing. Eventually, Ed stabilized and with the strength of his arms and legs, pulled himself up. He did not fall again.

Weeks earlier I was tested for lupus (“wolf” in Latin) and had most of the signs. But it wasn’t until I crashed, following those stressful few days, that the “working diagnosis of lupus” and what it would entail for my life, came frightfully clear. Where in the months prior I’d experienced all-over joint pain for long spells, immediately after this experience and for several days I started to hurt all over, every minute, every day, in every joint—from my knuckles down to my toes, and every joint in between. Movements I’d always taken for granted, such as rolling over in bed or reaching to pick up my laptop, caused wincing. Fatigue made a walk to the kitchen a slog through Amazonian quicksand. The inflammation even reached my eyes and one ear. If I started to feel a slight reprieve and tried to resume “getting a few things done,” I’d slide backward. I realized the only way to deal with the autoimmune-induced inflammation of lupus was to rest until the flare up of symptoms subsided. Intuiting it would take a while, I cleared my calendar for at least two weeks… {Read remainder of column on Patheos HERE.}