Fighting Back - 3: The Patient Activist
Posted by JohnD
I have a hard time being a patient or thinking of myself in that role. In one sense, to be a patient means to be sick, to be under treatment by a medical professional, to be undergoing all sorts of tests and therapies. See the trend there – the intolerable passive voice says it all. I am having things done to me – I am leaving it to others to cure me. Of course, they ask for my cooperation (be a good patient), which means I should do what they tell me to do. “Patient” comes from a Latin word that means “to suffer.” And suffering comes in two varieties: you suffer when you feel pain and you suffer when you allow something to be done. Both fit the classic role of the patient – you’re in pain and you allow doctors to treat you. So, what’s wrong with that, especially if you seek out the best treatment you can find?
The problem is that none of the treatments I’ve encountered can get the job done. I can’t wait around for treatments to work on their own. If I don’t take an active role in treatment, then nothing will help for long. That’s because the human factor, the will to heal, makes such an enormous difference. As I found in dealing with cancer, I have to function as a partner with each new tool I use and see it as one element of an overall strategy for getting better. As is true of every depressed person, though, there are those times when I am so severely ill that my active contribution to healing fails. Standing up can be hard enough, let alone trying to wage a campaign against the illness. The hope then is that whatever external treatments are applied will soften the impact of depression so that I can get back enough energy and presence of mind to activate myself once again. That’s the partnership.
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Photo Credit: Ann Triling
As I came to accept and believe that depression wasn't the result of my failings or weaknesses, but a major illness, a malignant condition, then I needed to deal with treatment more consciously. Up to that point, I had been through a lot of talking therapies and the newer medications, but while each approach helped for a while, nothing was effective for very long. I realized I had to become more active in my own treatment, and I had learned how to do that from another disease I had recently had to combat. That was cancer. But what I found was that I couldn't do much about that disease until I had confronted a deepening depression.
