chronic illness and love and other drugs

We watched Love and Other Drugs. While the content itself is a world away from our experience with Isaac, it is worth mentioning that the character living with a chronic disease hit home in a big way thinking about Isaac and his life ahead of him. In the movie, the character with Parkinson's has done a lot of self-work coming to terms with her conditions, but her love interest has to start at the beginning, which is where my wife and I started as well, about seven months ago or so.

At the beginning we both hope and fear for a diagnosis. Of course we hope the diagnosis is something curable and treatable, even while it looks like all signs point otherwise. But also, before a good diagnosis is made, we just want to know something. Simultaneously, we don't want to hear a diagnosis that means a lifetime of attention, surgery, or anything drastic.

Maybe that's why the first stage after that is some sort of rosy hope stage where we are sure that we can find a way to beat the disease. We know that if we just eat the right thing or can make the right adjustment then everything will be okay, that even everything will be as we otherwise expected, save for the adjustments. In the movie, as soon as Jamie (the love interest) realizes the reality of Maggie's Parkinson's symptoms, he is off like a shot to find all the latest treatments and figure out just how they are going to solve the problem. It reminds me of me, and diet and probiotics, with Isaac.

But there is this stage of acceptance that I am easing into, and it is what follows the fervor of the newly-diagnosed. One sort of finds a peace with the reality of the condition, and without losing hope and doing whatever we can to treat and cure, we also accept that this condition affects us and will do so for a long long time if not forever. The movie does a good job of showing Maggie's inspiring balance she has found, and Jamie's struggle as to whether or not he can make it to that acceptance phase.

Of course there are other themes in the movie worth mentioning. Like the pharmaceutical racket, the disillusionment of doctors, and the eruption of the US health insurance system.