Even a doctor with scleroderma can find symtoms demoralizing

A coaching client asked me whether she should start planning her application for Social Security Disabilty benefits. My client, a primary care physician who has three children and a very busy practice, lives with scleroderma. At 50, the disease is getting worse (some days she has trouble holding a pen), her energy is slowing down and she worries that she doesn’t have the brainpower she did at 25. She said she was kidding but I could tell she was scared.

What happened was that she couldn’t remember where she had filed some important information about a patient and that same day, she couldn’t remember the name of a patient she’s been seeing once a month for a year. Then she found herself very winded climbing one flight of stairs to her office and when she had to walk a long distance to another part of the hospital.

I told her that I can’t remember how to turn on my computer some mornings but I believe that’s a result of two things — getting older and overload — not MS. I also told her that it’s easy to feel scared of any changes that we think might be coming from this thing called, “chronic illness”.

I understand her fears. It’s so easy to let ourselves slide into the place of fear that hangs over us. But it clouds the picture and soon everything can look like it’s caused by illness, rather than just living life. I suggested that when “new symptoms” seem confusing or frightening, she might use the clinical skills she’s developed to make a patient diagnosis. She might not have an answer to what’s causing this but it will help her think things through more rationally. Illness — it can be so overwhelming that we forget to use the skills we’ve cultivated. She and I also developed a plan for her to resume an exercise program that she has started and stopped several times over the past 10 years, something she prescribes for her patients but can’t find the time to do herself. We both know this will take a different type of commitment than she’s had — she thinks our plan will make the difference. We’ll see in two weeks how that goes.  🙂

And then I gave her a piece of advice: put away the SSDI application. Rosalind