Miracle workers
By Ingebjørg Midsem Dahl
When people who are normally healthy get very ill, they typically do nothing at all. This is a sensible approach if you're ill for a short time, but when you're ill for ages it starts getting dissatisfying. You begin to look for little openings that will allow you to do something despite being very ill. You find yourself thinking thoughts like: If I read two pages a day, I could finish the fifth Harry Potter book in just one year. If I dictate for a minute a day, I could write to my friends, I could write poetry, or even a book. If I put on one decoration per day, I could finish a card in just one week. That's when the miracles begin. No, I'm not thinking about big, flashy miracles and instant cures, but the miracle of having a life despite being very ill. When we find a way of pursuing our interests for very short periods of time, we suddenly have something to think about, something to tell our friends and something to look forward to. It's a small life, and it may still be quite boring, and it's certainly not what we had planned, but it's still life, and it's ours. You don't have to do something flashy like writing a book. The aim of it all is simply to have fun within our limitations, because if we manage to keep things within our limitations, we can achieve the other miracle too, the one of slow improvement. And if you're not quite up to having fun between rest breaks yet, don't worry. You're already performing the miracle of surviving extreme illness. Your hobbies and interests will still be there when you're well enough. So the next time someone asks you what you're doing, say that you are doing something they wouldn't even have thought possible. After all, we are miracle workers, eh?
Copyright© Ingebjørg Midsem Dahl 2010
