As I was casually watching TV the other day and also reading, working and checking my Iphone, I heard the strangest thing in the background on a commercial that caught my ear. It was a pharmaceutical commercial for some drug and it was saying the side affects, which is always a disturbingly long list. One of them was “idiopathic constipation”. Well, the term “idiopathic” piqued my curiosity because it sounds an awful lot like “idiotic constipation”, so I had to look it up and research it.
Most sites define “idiopathic” as to have “no known cause”. OK, so let me get this straight. After taking the drug, one of the side affects is “idiopathic constipation” which means no known cause, but the cause is taking the drug because its a side affect. Whhhat? I mean, sometimes I think that they think we are all pretty “idiotic” to go for that. But I digress….I did, however, find a definition that fit a bit better in a medical dictionary – “relating to a disease that is not the result of any other disease”.
So, I went a bit deeper into the root meaning of the word. “Idio-” comes from the Greek meaning “peculiar, isolation, private”. And “-pathy” means the “treatment of a disease, or suffering from a disease”. So put together and you get “a peculiar and private suffering from a disease”.
Bingo – it took me somewhere I didn’t expect; a better definition of Lyme and what we all live through. I mean, peculiar doesn’t even begin to cover how weird our lives get in Lyme and the myriad of therapies and treatmenat protocols we engage in that seem off the charts. I don’t think I have to even explain or discuss how private our suffering is because the world doesn’t acknowledge it and people keep denying us our own symptoms.
Stay with me here, I’m going to get to a point. One more time. I looked up “idiot” to see how closely related these two words really are. It is actually derived from the same Greek root but also the Latin for idiota. So we get meanings like “a natural fool”, or “one who is fooled” or a “professional fool” which I like much better than our current modern meaning of low intelligence.
What I learned by this word study in relation to Lyme or other chronic illnesses can be summarized for you here – (see I finally did get to a point):
- Be a professional at getting well, not a “profesional fool”
- Go into getting better with your eyes wide open and ask for help or you will be the “one who is fooled”. Modern medicine makes more money if you stay sick, so who do you think is really in your corner?
- Everything about chronic illness and Lyme feels like an idiom – “a peculiar dialect or language” – LEARN IT, it will save your life
- All of us in Lyme have our own idiosyncrasies – symptoms vary, healing varies, but our fight to overcome and live again is the same. Band together and build one another up and help each other climb to safety.
- Develop new habits or idosyncrasies that involve positive thinking, giving back to others, gratefulness and selflessness.
- Don’t suffer alone – don’t let your disease push you into a private cave where hope cannot even reach you. Spend time with people who love you and help them understand so you are not alone. Hope is alive and is looking for you to hold onto it.
I can’t emphasize it enough – HOPE and healing are out there, they are achieveable. Overcoming this beast is hard but it can be done. Don’t let you mind play tricks on you or convince you to give up. There is life still to be lived. Any other way would be sheer idioticalness (really it seems I made up that word, but its real).
The discerning heart seeks knowledge, but the mouth of a fool feeds on folly. (Prov 15:14)
Blessings and healing,
Janice Fairbairn
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