Chronic illness can make normal stress overwhelming

Stress is part of life

Stress is part of everyday life. In fact, stress is essential to get us up and moving each morning.

Unfortunately, for those of us struggling with chronic illness, normal stress can be overwhelming, leading to a spiral of ever-increasing inability to function.

What is stress?

The word stress has become a kind of catch-all phrase used to mean any kind of discomfort. We say we’re “stressed out” when we’re unhappy with the way our life is unfolding. This use of stress is inaccurate and shows our lack of understanding. Stress is simply the response your body makes to a demand (a stressor.) It is a chemical reaction within your body. It is a natural and normal part of each and every day.

There are two defined types of stress: distress and eustress. Distress is when a physical or emotional response to a stressor doesn’t help us. Eustress is a response that helps us function better.

How can stress help you function better? In a survival situation, the increased heart rate and additional oxygen available for your muscles to use to fight or flee could save your life. In sports competitions, public speaking, or a theater production, these physical responses to the stressor can help improve your focus and your performance.

Of course, the same chemical reactions that help one person feel good and strong, can make another feel uncomfortable and “stressed out.” One person gets stimulated by performing, another becomes incapacitated by stage fright.

Why are we distressed?

The key to “handling stress” is whether we can calm our bodies, returning to a more relaxed state after a stress response. Chronic stress is an inability to return to this relaxed state, so that the body becomes exhausted from remaining in emergency mode.

Because of the links between stress responses and chronic illness, those of us struggling to be well are often be told that if we eliminate stress from our life, our illness will go away. In my experience, this is not possible. At one time, on the recommendation of a doctor, I spent 6 weeks lying on the couch doing crossword puzzles. This temporarily improved how I felt and reduced some of my symptoms. However, as soon as I began a normal, everyday life, my illness returned.

I’m just sensitive

Rather than stressors being the cause of chronic illness, or at least my chronic illness, I believe that the same difficulty my body has dealing with the toxins produced by breathing, exercise and other normal functions (called oxidative stress), causes my body to have trouble recovering from the side effects of a stress response. Because of the way my body functions (whether because of the illness or as a side effect of my health problems), every day stressors make physical discomfort and symptoms worse. I am more sensitive to stress reactions, can be more irritable, and can take more time to return to a calm state than others.

Stressors are a part of life. For the family and friends of a person struggling with chronic illness, it is difficult to understand why their loved one has trouble dealing with each day’s small stressors. Hopefully, more complete understanding of the mechanism of stress will help. Kindness and compassion for the irritability and discomfort of a person with chronic illness can help reduce at least one major stressors.

Coffee Party, Tea Party…..it is clear that we the people of the United States are upset with government at all levels, don’t feel represented, and don’t feel that government is working for our best interests.

The way our government leaders are handling healthcare reform is representative of this.  A plan was hashed out among the lawmakers—without much input or support from “we the people.”   Then our President attempted to ram it through, with threats that if we didn’t do it his way, then we’d have nothing at all and be “left” with our current situation.

I’m sorry.  This is not reality.  Nothing ever stays the same.  The fact that the issue is being discussed creates change.  The debate in and of itself develops our thinking and creates a certain amount of change from the process.  Our expectations evolve and we make change with the actions we take and the decisions we make.

I am very satisfied with my current health insurance situation……even though I am unemployed (or recently self-employed, depending on how you or I choose to view it.)

My insurance is low cost, covers what needs to be covered, gives me full flexibility to access the health care providers I want to see, and is fully portable if I change employers or decide to remain self-employed.

After years of health insurance that didn’t cover most of my expenses, with many, many visits to doctors who didn’t have the training to advise me on the chronic condition I struggled with, and multiple lab tests and invasive procedures that helped nothing, I turned to a Health Savings Account with a high-deductible medical insurance plan.

I am very happy with this.  And I think the HSA plans may be the answer to our health insurance dilemma.

When I was young (almost 50 years ago), we didn’t expect medical insurance to pay all of our healthcare expenses.  Somewhere along the line, we traded choosing our providers and making our medical decisions with the HMO model, minimal co-payments for office visits, and little or no relationship with our providers.  I don’t think this was a good trade.

With the HSA model, because I’m paying doctor visits, lab tests and making decisions about the value and need for these services,  I am more in control.  I have my best interests at heart, and those who have their own interests are no longer making my decisions for me.

The money I deposit into my HSA savings account to cover these expenses is tax deductible, an investment that I also control, but always available to me for future health care needs.

For major medical expenses, I have a 100% coverage hospital plan after only a $3,800 deductible.  After only 2 years, I have much more than the plan deductible saved in my HSA account.

I believe we are over using our health and medical care system.  It is great that we have advanced technology available to us.  Unfortunately, because “it is there” and insurance covers much of it, doctors and other medical providers utilize it more often than necessary.  In fact, because of our overly litigious society, they feel obligated and under threat to recommend and encourage more services than are needed.

If you and I take back the decision-making for our own bodies, this will change.  A simple way to drive the economics of the medical and health services companies back into reasonable costs and practices is to take back individual control.  It is a little-known fact that you can negotiate fees with doctors, hospitals, labs and other health providers—-especially if you are paying, rather than an insurance company.

From my experience as a medical insurance billing service, doctors inflate their prices because they know the insurance companies only pay a portion of the billed fee.  So they bill a higher rate to get the money they want to actually receive.  As a cash payer, you can pay even lower fees because you lower the doctors office and administration costs.

You and I can make change happen.  We don’t need to try to influence congress to initiate these changes……except to ensure that the HSA tax deductions continue.

We can influence big business with how we choose to spend our health and medical care dollars.  If we no longer pay for full-coverage insurance plans and expect insurance to pay all our costs, then the money doesn’t flow into the big insurance companies’ coffers.

If we are making the choices for our health care, the companies spending millions of dollars administering HMO plans are not needed (and those nurses can go back to working in doctor offices and hospitals, helping the nursing shortage also!)

To learn more about how HSA accounts work, here are some resources:

• Health Savings Account blog
• Streetwise HSA
• US Treasury – tax implications for HSA accounts
• Kiplinger info about HSA accounts
• Wikipedia info about Health Savings Accounts

HSA accounts are called “consumer directed health plans.”  You can take charge of your health, your health care, and your medical insurance with an HSA plan.  I did and hope to continue to, without interference by the next great idea put forth by our lawmakers.

Ephebiphobia is defined in Wikipedia as an abnormal or irrational and persistent fear or loathing of teenagers, youth, and adolescents.  Merriam-Webster Online has no listing for the word although it is used often by sociologists and others studying youth.

There are extensive citations in Wikipedia about Ephebiphobia, Adultcentrism, Adultism, and the multiple forms of discrimination against adolescents.  As the parent of a teenager and a young adult, I have seen distrust, dislike and base fear of young people expressed by adults fairly often.

At times, it can appear as if adults are involved in a war to maintain an “upper hand.”  As a society, we keep our children from meaningful work (telling them that getting an education is their work), refuse to include them in decision-making—-even about their own lives, and repeatedly demonstrate that we don’t trust them or feel their contributions are important.  Then we wonder why adolescents behave in ways similar to other marginalized groups in our society, with high rates of violence, suicide, and acting out behaviors.

One of the societal institutions we use to keep youth off the streets and under control is the education system.  Truancy laws are more for protecting store owners and working parents from unsupervised adolescents than for ensuring that children receive a good education.  Many times the need for truancy laws is proposed in these terms, acknowledging the open secret that schools don’t know what to do with these bored, lonely, and disenfranchised children.

If the schools were truly meaningful and engaging “work” for children, as we like to tell them it is, perhaps our relationships with youth would be different.  Unfortunately, we mandate that all children attend schools, without regard to whether school is the best academic situation for each individual’s needs.   In school, our youth are given few opportunities to make decisions or be involved with adults in charge of the decisions that affect their lives.  More often, they are told what courses must be taken, what books they must read, what they can wear, what time they will be allowed to eat, use the bathroom, and talk with peers.  No wonder they rebel!  There are few adults that would be willing to or even able to adhere to the rules and regulations that are standard in most high schools.

I seems that underlying all the rhetoric, we don’t feel children have the ability or the right to make decisions about their life.  We believe deeply that children must be told what to do and guided into the appropriately moral, intelligent and practical avenues.  Because of this, we offer them few opportunities to learn, practice, and develop good decision-making skills.

It is telling that the United States is one of two countries (Somalia being the other) where the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has not been ratified.  Among other things, the document contends that children “have the right to express their opinions and to have those opinions heard and acted upon when appropriate, to be protected from abuse or exploitation, to have their privacy protected and requires that their lives not be subject to excessive interference.”  The Convention states that laws of nations and states must be in the best interests of children and that “every child has certain basic rights, including the right to life, his or her own name and identity, to be raised by his or her parents within a family or cultural grouping and have a relationship with both parents, even if they are separated.” [Wikipedia]

The United States has signed on to the two Optional Protocols.  We have agreed that we won’t allow minor children to be conscripted into the military or allow them to be actively engaged in any armed conflict and we have agreed that we won’t legalize child prostitution, child pornography, or child slavery.  However, in almost 15 years, we as a nation have been unable to agree that children have the right to be involved in making decisions about their lives or allowed to express and participate in determining their needs.

Until we as a society and a nation look at how we view children, I believe the problems with our schools, our family law courts, and our social service networks will remain unsolved.  Unless we can come to an understanding that children are fully human, with many of the same needs as adults, including the need to have a say in their education, we will remain behind the rest of the world.

Although we don’t express it in this manner, we continue to treat our children as property and a commodity—-ideas from the dark ages.  It is time to examine and change the underlying beliefs we hold as a society about our children.

(Thank you to my friend and fellow blogger, Tammy Takahashi, for bringing up the issue of Children’s Rights in her blog Just Enough and Nothing More)

Santa getting ready for Christmas

I live with Santa. Tell the children, he is real and he’s watching out for them.

Surprisingly, perhaps, I have not had much interest in Christmas for many years.  The commercialism and pressure to make the holiday into a big deal has turned me off.

This September, when I walked into one of the large hardware stores and saw the decorations already up and the lights twinkling, I vowed that I would not purchase one holiday item from that store this year.  I have kept that promise, even when I needed battery-powered holiday lights for my kayak so I could enjoy a Christmas boat parade.

I haven’t purchased many holiday items at any store this year.  My 2 and 4 year old grandchildren received books and a CD because they live far away and I can’t spend the holidays with them.  Their mother (my daughter) received equipment so we can Skype together.  My 14 year old son received a camp experience that he wanted very much.  I have not given any additional gifts.

Santa and I haven’t decided what we will do Christmas Day.  Last year we were able to be with my daughter and grandchildren.  This year it wasn’t possible.  The year before, Santa and I went on a desert back road exploration.  Spending time together has been the focus, not holiday gifts.

Tonight, we will be driving down from our mountain home to attend Christmas Eve services at our closest Unitarian Universalist church.  While Santa isn’t (yet?) a devout UU, I am and have been for more than 20 years.  As a UU, I feel strongly about the importance of celebrating the spirit of Christmas—-as embodied by Santa Claus’ spirit of joy, music and fun, the lights, the rebirth of the sun, and the hope for peace on earth, if not the literal birth of Christ.  And it is important to me to share this with my friends in our church community.

Because of the depth of my feelings about this holiday, pro and con, I was taken aback by the vitriol and pain expressed by a writer whom I admire.  Garrison Keillor’s “Don’t Mess with Christmas” on Salon.com on December 15, 2009 singled out Unitarian Universalists as “wrong, wrong, wrong” for re-writing a standard Christmas Carol for their own purposes.  He said, “This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism and we Christians have stood for it long enough.”  He then went on to say, “Christmas is a Christian holiday — if you’re not in the club, then buzz off.”

Not only is this ironic, it is just sad.  I believe it is easily possible to claim Christianity as the ultimate in spiritual piracy.  Why is Christmas celebrated on December 25?  Not because of any real historical claim to this date as Jesus of Nazareth’s actual birth, but because of a pagan holiday previously celebrated at this time.  There are many more examples of Christianity’s use of other traditions’ spiritual symbols for it’s own purposes.

The Christmas holiday has a checkered past.  It has been banned and celebration has been forbidden by staunch Christians.  It’s re-invention owes much to a Unitarian’s story of the Christmas Spirit(s)—–Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”.  And people who are decidedly not Christian are happy to take the day off as a federal holiday in the United States, put up a holiday tree, light candles and feast with friends and neighbors.

While I can’t defend the level of materialism and crass consumerism that is currently part of the holiday, I will defend Santa and light, peace and hope for the world.  I will also wish anyone who wants the gift, my hopes for your very Merry Christmas, no matter if you are Christian, Unitarian Universalist, Taoist, Buddhist, Muslim, Shinto or practice an unnamed brand of spiritual connection.  Please go in peace and respect each other!

]]> http://1wordsworth.com/2009/12/24/merry-uu-christmas/feed/ 0 http://1wordsworth.com/2009/10/15/climate/ http://1wordsworth.com/2009/10/15/climate/#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:40:57 +0000 Caroline Q http://1wordsworth.com/?p=23

Today is Blog Action Day,  a day set set aside for bloggers to exhibit their influence and the power of writing and words.  The 2009 issue that participating bloggers will be discussing is climate change.

Climate according to Merriam-Webster Online is (1) a region of the earth having specified climatic conditions.  (2a) the average course or condition of the weather at a place usually over a period of years…… (3) the prevailing influence or environmental conditions characterizing a group or period.

All of these definitions assume that climate is a static state or if they allow for variation, the differences are averaged together to find “the prevailing influence.”  Is “climate change” an oxymoron?  Is change contradictory or incongruous when discussing climate?  Can climate change or is it just what is, according to the definition?

The way we view climate (as static and unchanging) and the way we use the word change (as either an action we take or something that happens to us) illuminates some of the problems we having with the earth’s current situation.

Variations in temperature, precipitation and winds are always occurring.  Weather predictors are the butt of many jokes because even with advanced equipment, a wealth of data, and intricate computer programs, they are unable to accurately tell us if the sun will shine or the wind will blow on any given day.

Humans would like to be in charge of their surroundings, internal and external.  We want to be able to count on the weather, our spouse’s mood, that our home will be comfortable, or that our health will be good.  We want things to stay relatively “the same” and get stressed if there is too much changing in our lives.

We don’t want change to happen to us, we want to be making the changes and in charge.

Humans also have difficulty acknowledging that there are some things we just don’t know.  We like our scientists to be authoritative, rather than telling us their theories.  We want definitive answers and we want to be able to predict what the outcome will be from an action.

When science comes out with new data that contradicts the old, we wonder which information is the “true fact.”  And we dig in our heels, saying because it goes against our intuitive sense, “it can’t be correct.”  Then we attack the messenger and spend years debating what is truth and what is not.

In the case of the earth’s climate, it is different than it was ten years ago, ten thousand years ago, and ten million years ago.  It will continue to change.  We have choices about how we deal with the differences.

Will we dig in our heels and spend our time arguing about whether there is change, what the changes are, and what “you” (government, the people on the other side of the world, neighbors) should do about them?

Or can we acknowledge that humans are an integrated part of the climate?  Can we actively participate by making choices that help balance the systems we are a part of?  Will we use our large brains to adapt to change instead of trying to turn back the clock to some set point?  What would that point be—an inland sea covering eastern Colorado?

Let us look forward and adapt.  Let us continue to learn more so that we can move forward.  We don’t need Chicken Little.  It is not helpful to berate and belittle humanity.  As we change the “weather” within ourselves, we can change the climate rather than have change come down upon us.

The noun adventure, according to the Merriam-Webster Online definition (1a) is “an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks” or (2) is “an exciting or remarkable experience.”  The Wikipedia disambiguation page for adventure sums it up:  “An adventure is an undertaking into the unknown, often connotating [sic] danger and excitement.”

There are people who seek out adventure, hoping to brush up close to danger and find excitement.  It is their belief that they will understand themselves better by pushing against their limits.  This theory is widely used in adventure education, where youth and adults are intentionally put into new and challenging situations with the expectation that during the adventure, they will learn about themselves and discover how to function under duress.

Other people work just as hard to avoid activities that they feel are dangerous.   They appear to be satisfied living in a routine and don’t wish to expose themselves to situations with unknown outcomes.

Understandably, there is little in common between these two world views.   Still, in my life, I try to find a place somewhere in the middle.

Everyday life is full of challenges.  Often we are required to make decisions without knowing fully what the consequences will be.   If we avoid making decisions out of a wish to avoid danger, this has consequences.  If we plunge forward, looking for excitement and something different only for the pleasure of something new, this too has consequences.

The balance comes when we look at life as an adventure.  We know it is always an undertaking into the unknown, but we seek out, pay attention to, and acknowledge the remarkable experiences that come along during the journey.

My thoughts on the day after being laid off from a “secure” job of 8 years, with the prospect of new opportunities ahead but also the fear in needing to make my way without the underlying safety net of employment.

After the usual trials and tribulations, the basic blog is set up.  I will be updating and looking forward to posting in the next few days.  Hooray!