A tsunami called diagnosis

“I just want to go back to my former life…”

This is the phrase that every sick person has said or thought at least once in his or her life. Illness has the power to shatter the future we had planned for ourselves, striking hard and decisively at every area of our lives. We would like to return to life before the illness, for everything to go according to our plans. When that fails, the world collapses. We collapse, because no one prepares us. We demand the life we had before because we have expectations, but these are disappointed. Life only allows us to move forward, so that look back only increases the pain, the suffering, the falls along the way.

Diagnosis is like a watershed; there is always a before and an after. And that before will never come back. And even when we’ve been sick for a long time and looking for answers, when the diagnosis comes it scares, it hits and it hurts.

It is like a mourning. A bereavement that confronts us with an irreversible loss, and from that moment we, who continue to live, are forced to build, indeed re – build, our life and our future around that loss. We lose our health, we lose our identity as a healthy person, and the sick one takes over, permanently.

We experience a tangle of emotions, very difficult to manage, especially when there are opposing and conflicting ones. We are confused — “me of all people?” and then angrily “why?” We are afraid and wonder whether we will have a normal life, whether we will have the same opportunities as others. Powerless, we find ourselves struggling against ourselves and our own bodies. Paradoxically, we are relieved when we finally find a doctor who believes our pain and is able to help us. It is also possible to experience all these emotions together, knowing that they are not switches that we can turn on and off at will. Every emotion must be listened to and welcomed. Indeed, understanding our emotions allows us to act and, as a result, deal with the situation we are experiencing, whatever it may be.

For this we must allow ourselves to live and go through denial, anger, sadness, until we reach acceptance. There comes, in fact, a time when we have to accept that there is no going back, with the knowledge that grief does indeed make us different, overwhelming and messing up everything, but it also leaves us with the possibility of finding ourselves again.

Just like a tsunami. The moment before it hits and destroys everything, making us breathless. The next moment everything is still and we can only look around, observing how everything has collapsed. It is painful and we have the task of recognizing that pain so that we can start again from there, aware of what we have lost. It will not be easy, but we have a chance to rebuild.

Indeed, illness and pain offer us the opportunity to stop for a second, observe and weigh our lives, understanding what really matters, what makes us happy. It should not, therefore, surprise us that, at a time of such deep self-knowledge, we can implement major changes in work or relationships. Some may change friendships, partners, close people. It can be a time when we discover and rediscover ourselves. We can, thus, understand even those who enact seemingly irrational and paradoxical behavior, even thanking the disease, because in it they see the opportunity to rediscover themselves and grow.

There will be things we can no longer do. But, depending on the perspective from which we view them, these will have left a gap or created a new space. Space to do things never thought of before, never considered. You cannot have, indeed get back, the life you had before. It will be a different life, but that does not mean it cannot still be an exciting and worthwhile life.