Living with Chronic Illness

One of the upsides of Rick's illness is that we are spending more time together than we have in years - driving in to town for his appointments, surgeries, procedures, dialysis, and training in peritoneal dialysis. We talk about his illness, our hopes and disappointments, and so forth.
For a long time, I was the sick one, with my angina and obesity and fatigue and my ruined back and knees and shoulder. For about a year now, Rick has been the sick one - cancer and kidney failure really do ace everything else.
He's not happy being the center of attention in this way, believe me. And I've had to change gears in my head: now I, such as I am, have to be the caregiver instead of the poor sick one.
We are gradually learning to live with chronic illness. As I've been thinking about it and trying to make sense of things in my mind I've come up with this: when you face a crisis, you rise to the occasion, assuming it doesn't kill you outright. You do whatever you can and whatever you must to meet the challenge.
Usually such a crisis passes, and you get back to "normal," whatever that is, and go on. Kidney failure doesn't pass, at least not usually. I've heard of people regaining some kidney function and going off of dialysis for a time, but that is not the case with Rick.
So this is how it is with chronic illness. You rise to the occasion, but the illness does not go away. Then you rise to the next occasion, and the next. There is never a time when you can say, "That's over." Unless of course someone dies, but so far we've avoided that.
This is tiring and can become depressing. Depressing because the impossibility of the situation, the loss of control over your life, makes you angry, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it but follow instructions and do the best you can to stay alive.
So you have to adjust, adapt, change. The life you knew before is gone. One friend (thanks, Julie) advised me to deal with my grief. I hadn't thought of it that way before, but once she named it, I thought, oh yeah - life as I knew it is over. This is loss, and loss means grief. Duh.
Oh well. You get it when you get it, not one moment before.
Rick has been talking lately about how hard it is to believe he's an invalid, after being so physically active for all his life. This is a hard adjustment for him. A couple of weeks ago both of us had high hopes that he'd make the transition to peritoneal dialysis at home, but his pd catheter got blocked, and that was that. Now it is unblocked, so he starts pd class again tomorrow, and we hope that we don't run into another crisis which lands him back in hemodialysis again. We are both sure that doing pd at home will be calmer and less traumatic for him, not to mention the money we won't be spending on ferry fare, gas, and meals.
So all you of Rick's friends and family: I ask for prayers, meditations, white light, whatever you can send to him this week to lift his sagging spirits and usher him through the transition he so wishes to make, to peritoneal dialysis at home.
We will continue adjusting and adapting as we go along. Chronic illness is not an easy path. We know that now.
We thank you for walking with us. Your generosity and kindness have kept us going.