No Left Turns

Pulitzer prize winning editorialist Michael Gartner wrote a delightful piece, A Life Without Left Turns, that illustrates the benefits of accepting and working around limits. What do limits have to do with Healthy Survivorship? Everything.

A Healthy Survivor is "a survivor who gets good care and lives as fully as possible." You have to know your limits to live as fully as possible. If you push yourself too hard or try to do things beyond your limits, you'll probably know it, because you'll feel bad, break something or get sick (or sicker). If you push yourself too little, you'll unnecessarily miss out on opportunities that might have brought great joy or meaning.

How do Healthy Survivors deal with limits? Knowledge, hope and action (of course!)

• Learn what the usual limits are for someone like you in your situation. Your doctors, nurses and other reliable resources can guide you.
• Work with your doctors to test your limits, if this is the best way to determine your limits.
• Respect your limits, and then see if there is a safe and reasonable way to sneak around them.
• When appropriate, nourish hope of improving limits.
• Always nourish hope of finding happiness within the constraints of your illness or injury.

Happy Healthy Survivors live well within the limits imposed by their illness. Even if it means no left turns.

Comments

[Carol Ann Story]

Hi Wendy!
I just found this site today.... I am so glad to learn of all your accomplishments.... you remain one of my all-time favorite people/guests....
best,
carol

[Julie]

Hi Wendy,

Thank you for this post! You get to the heart of it, beautifully. I am going to give my doctor and my social worker a copy...

I have a lot of pain and nerve damage due to cancer treatment, and I always struggle with how many hours I can work at my job. Thanks to your post, I have a better understanding of how to judge my limits -- push myself just a little, respect my capabilities and limits, and trust myself to know when I've had enough.

Hugs from here,
Julie

[Wendy S. Harpham, MD]

Dear Julie,
Thanks for letting me know this post hit home for you. Living fully within limits is a tough job, especially when your limits are a moving target.

We'll talk about this more in future posts. So if you have any new insights or find a helpful tip, send it along.

With hope, Wendy

[Wendy S. Harpham, MD]

Dear Carol,
What a treat for me to reconnect with you. It's been almost 16 years since you gently wrapped your arm around my shoulders after my first national interview and gave me some pointers. I've been benefiting from your advice all these years.

Now, after the test of time, I repeat what I said in my handwritten note to you many years ago: Thank you!

Enjoy the blog. Looking forward to an ongoing dialogue.

With hope, Wendy

[B]

With all different types of pain (physical and emotional) I think one of the greatest challenges is understanding the "normal" limits that can then help guide us as we make decisions. Who else do you see as "reliable resources" to help us understand limits - aside from professional doctors and nurses?

[Wendy S. Harpham, MD]

Dear B,
Thank you for your question, especially for phrasing it in terms of physical AND emotional challenges. "

Normal" is one of those tricky words. Sometimes it causes trouble because of the connotations, such as "free from any disorder" or "not abnormal." That's why I usually use the word "healthy" with its connotations of wholeness.

Sometimes the most reliable resources for help assessing your limits are people without alphabet soup after their names (i.e. without MD, RN, PhD and so on), namely veterans of the same challenges you are facing.

Organizations, newsletters, websites, groups, books, articles and, of course, blogs written in whole or part by veteran Healthy Survivors may be your best bet.

Reading stories and advice will give you a sense of the average limit, along with a sense of those outliers who do better or worse than average.

As I've struggled with certain post-treatment issues, I've found myself comforted by the knowledge that I'm not the only one dealing with this or that. But after that, I stopped caring if I was "normal" for someone who'd been through what I'd been through. I didn't care if I was average or not. I put all my energy into being the best I could be. I wanted to get as healthy as I could. For me, focusing on "normal" was discouraging. If anything, I focused on creating a "new normal" that integrated the changes and losses into the best life I could make.

P.S. This is why I changed the subtitle of my second book from "Your Guide Back to Normal" to "A Guide to Your New Life."
http://wendyharpham.com/Pages/After.C.htm

With hope, Wendy