Stories of Illness Week 1 Response: My Story of Illness

I was reminded of my own narrative/story of illness. I was diagnosed with eczema at a very young age. My parents were told my eczema ranked in the top 2% of the most extreme cases in the world. Eczema took over my life. Everything was examined with a microscopic lens- how would my skin react to different weather temperatures, foods, cloth materials, environments, stressful situations, etc.

My childhood was filled with copious amounts of doctor's appointments where they tested different medications on me. I would be constantly going in and out of the hospital as that became the norm. I don't remember when it happened but there came a point where I began to dissociate with my body. “I’m fine but my body is not” this line in the chaos narrative chapter resonated with me. I hadn't considered this aspect of one's story. There comes a point in the constant upheaval where the owner of the story begins to pull away from the ownership of their body. The connection is strained or in some extreme cases severed. I remember saying something similar during my illness, lamenting that I was okay but a part of my body was not. Walking up to a mirror and not recognizing or even liking who/what you see, it's a very upsetting experience.

The story of my illness as a child was one of chaos, it was feeling wronged and angry. Things are just getting worse. Fortunately, as I’ve gotten older and have found a medication that works as well as learned my triggers, my story and illness have become positive. I do have the occasional flare-up but that is remedied by medicine and treatment that I now know will work. My narrative is one of restitution, one with ebbs and flows.

After I finished the reading I began to wonder if these categories are explicitly strict. Can there only be one narrative at a time? Or are there narratives such as mine, with the chaos that unfolds into restitution? Surely there are. Restitution having periods of chaos within it or a chaos narrative that reaches restitution, a quest narrative that plunges into chaos, or any other combination.