Anyone who is living with a long-term illness, or who has known a close family member who is living with one, knows that it can be challenging. Apart from the illness itself, there are a range of difficulties that can come with living with an illness. Some challenges are things that have to be overcome every day and can be particularly draining. While long-term illness can often include extended hospital stays, the reality for most people is that they spend most of their time at home.
When living with a long-term illness from home, while there are challenges presented, there are also solutions to those challenges. Many solutions require only small changes, searching for ways to increase the comfort or enhance the mobility of the ill person, finding ways to bring greater emotional relief or keep motivated, and even decreasing the financial burdens of living with a long-term illness. Let’s look closer at some challenges and solutions that are common for both carers and the person with a chronic illness.
Staying Comfortable and Increasing Mobility
For many people who are living with a chronic illness, just getting comfortable can be a struggle. Many chronic illnesses cause fatigue, muscle weakness and pain. All of which makes getting comfortable difficult in even the best circumstances. The reality for many people with a long-term illness is that normal furniture is simply unfit for their use, or for their carers to help them.
While it can be difficult to remove the symptoms of pain and weakness, it is much easier to acquire some furniture that is designed for people in weaker conditions. By searching out specialized chairs or reliable hospital beds for sale, the comfort of people living with a long-term illness can be marginally increased. Many beds and chairs designed for chronically ill people take into account their lack of mobility, and therefore include features that can help them to sit up or get up. This can be especially welcome when it comes to caring for someone with a chronic illness, as it takes some of the burden off the carer.
The level of investment in this type of solution should fit the requirements. If there is slight discomfort sitting for long periods of time, a specialized padded chair or bed with backrest elevation could be all that is required. For more extreme needs, there is equipment that can help to lift and rotate supine patients and allow carers to help them up with minimal physical effort on their part.
Transforming the environment that a chronically ill person spends most of their time in into an environment that is designed to help them will not only ease the physical burden, but it is also likely to help them fight the mental war as well.
The Emotional and Mental Struggle
For most people, living with a long-term or chronic illness can be emotionally and psychologically taxing. Coping with the loss of independence, frustration of their situation, as well as feelings of depression and anxiety, are all part of the reality of living with a long-term illness. For the carers and family members of the chronically ill, feelings of guilt and helplessness are also common, as well as the possibility of burnout if they are required to sacrifice their own desires to help their loved one.
Finding solutions for the mental war is often not as simple or convenient as buying new furniture, but it is every bit, if not more, as important as achieving a level of physical comfort. There are a number of things that can be done to help win the mental battle for people with chronic illness and their carers, including, but not limited to:
- Freely communicating with each other about needs and feelings. Being able to have an open dialogue can help both carers and chronically ill people to feel closer and understand each other better.
- Engaging in professional therapy or counselling. Even if it’s just to talk through your feelings, it can be incredibly beneficial to speak to a professional.
- Joining community support groups. Being part of a community of people with similar experiences helps you feel like you aren’t going through it alone.
- Picking up hobbies. While it might seem cavalier to suggest, making sure that both chronically ill people are still doing things for no other reason than enjoyment is an important part of helping them to live with their illness.
Remember, everyone copes with things differently. The key is to find what will ease the mental burden for you. If therapy doesn’t work, maybe hobbies like reading or painting could prove therapeutic.
The Elephant in the Room, Cost
It might not be nice to discuss it, but the harsh reality is that, in many cases, living with a chronic illness can be expensive. Not only are there costs, sometimes exorbitant, associated with medication, equipment and potentially necessary modifications to the home, but there is also the consideration that income streams are likely to dwindle or stop. For many families, this means that they have to make sacrifices and attempt to find their way through complicated financial systems.
There are no silver-bullet solutions for easing the financial reality of living with a long-term illness. Some families will simply have fewer options than others, but there are some things that everyone can do to help, such as:
- Reaching out to social workers. Getting in touch with someone who specializes in finding assistance and helping people in your situation is a must. They will know the ins and outs of different programs and grants that might be able to help you.
- Signing up for benefits. Many areas and regions have some levels of government assistance available for chronically ill people who are in difficult financial positions. It might not be ideal, but this is the time to ask for help.
- Budget and plan. Where you can, plan for the future and budget accordingly.
- Take advantage of sales and second-hand options. It might not be ideal, but keeping an eye out for refurbished and second-hand options for tertiary needs like furniture could save a good deal of money.
The financial reality can often be grim, but taking some steps to help feel at least partially in control is likely to alleviate some measure of financial stress.
Don’t Let the Daily Routine Overcome You
For many people living with long-term and chronic illnesses, the daily routine can be complicated and tiring. There are medical appointments to keep and complicated medication regimes, add to this that the normal activities like keeping up personal hygiene, cleaning the house and preparing meals might all be difficult or impossible activities. The daily routine can be incredibly difficult for many chronically ill individuals.
Everyone’s situation is different, but some solutions for easing the daily routine include things like:
- Using technology. If possible, investing in smart technology and apps can help to organise the day. Reminders for medication and hygiene can help to keep things on track.
- Plan it out. If you plan out the entire daily routine, it will reduce the likelihood that anything important gets left out.
- Use automation. Getting groceries delivered or having scheduled prescription refills can be a huge time-saving boon for the chronically ill and their carers.
- Prepare in advance. Preparing meals, medications and appointments in advance is a smart time-saving method. This means cooking batches of things and setting out the week’s medications ahead of time.
While specific situations will vary, preparing and planning are likely to be helpful to everyone, even if just to mentally understand what each day is likely to look like.
Staying Connected and Social
For many people living with a long-term or chronic illness, feelings of isolation and disconnection can be common. They have to abandon their previous lives and all the connections and socialisation that went along with them. They might be limited by their condition and can often feel as though the world is moving on without them, leaving them forgotten and alone.
Fighting these feelings is a key part of the mental war against chronic illness. Thankfully, there are plenty of simple ways to help people feel connected to others. This includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- Keeping in touch. Keeping in contact and encouraging family and friends to visit periodically can be a huge mood-booster.
- Make use of volunteers. Many regions have volunteer programs designed specifically for the purpose of helping people feel connected, even if they cannot leave their homes.
- Join digital communities. The modern digital age abounds with digital communities that people can join. Just about any interest or hobby under the sun has a digital community associated with it. Engaging with these communities is a great way to make new friends and remain social.
Even if their old social life is a thing of the past, chronically ill people can find ways to connect with others and build a new social life.
Keeping Hope Alive Matters
One of the most difficult things for many people with chronic and long-term illnesses to do is to keep hope for the future. It can be devastating to be diagnosed with something that dramatically alters what you had planned for your future and hoped for in your life. But losing hope for the future is a hefty blow in the mental war.
While the overall outlook might not seem ideal, taking solace in small victories is often the best solution to keep hope alive. Any reason to celebrate is a good one.
Add to this the setting of realistic goals. Planning to walk a marathon immediately isn’t realistic, but getting to the end of the garden and back could be within your grasp. Even a small goal or accomplishment like learning a skill online could be enough to give someone a newfound sense of purpose.
Many people might find comfort in things like meditation, faith or philosophy, and there are huge libraries relating to all of these disciplines online. Sharing your experiences with others and helping them to come to terms with their own illnesses might also provide a sense of purpose and bring hope.
It might seem impossible, but keeping a positive mindset and having some hope for the future can be massively important for someone’s well-being.
Final Thoughts
Living with a chronic or long-term illness is one of the most difficult things that many people will experience. It takes a great deal of strength, both from the chronically ill and from their friends and family.
We have discussed only a few of the challenges that the chronically ill are likely to experience every day. Everyone will have a different experience and face different challenges, but each challenge they face will have some solutions.
Keep hope alive and live the best way you can, whatever that means for you and however you can.
