Author shares the upside of being in pain for 15 years
In one of the more memorable lines from the The Devil Wears Prada, the always-on-a-diet magazine staffer played by Emily Blunt says determinedly, “I’m just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.” Ah, the upside of being wretchedly ill.
Toni Bernhard’s latest column for Psychology Today doesn’t have that punchline verve, but she has pondered the good things that have come out of 15 years of living with chronic pain and illness. She put some of them into a list, headlined “What I wouldn’t change if my health were restored tomorrow.”
Bernhard is a former law professor and dean of students at the University of California at Davis, who came down with what doctors first thought was a viral infection and now are calling chronic fatigue syndrome (a name she calls “absurd . . . It’s like calling emphysema ‘chronic cough syndrome’ ”).
She’s obviously not too tired to write: The author of books, including How to be Sick and How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness, she wrote this column as part of a series called “Turning Straw Into Gold.”
Some of the things she wouldn’t change if she suddenly got well are fairly predictable: She’d continue to appreciate friends and family. She’d always accept limitations without bitterness. She wouldn’t change what she’s learned about getting enough sleep.
But some are a little more insightful, such as “I’d maintain a healthy skepticism about doctors.”
And “I’d never lose sight of the relief of not needing everyone to like me.”
In her teaching days, she says, one bad or even lukewarm evaluation could wipe out all the positive remarks. Now she’s too sick “to spend my precious energy worrying about what people think of me . . . It’s such a relief not to need everyone to think I’m awesome!”
And she would never, never abandon her “pillow arrangement.”
After years of spending too much time in bed, she has figured out exactly what pillow of what shape she needs to place where in her bed to get a comfortable night’s sleep.