Chronic Illness is Comedy Gold.

(The death-breath of life.)

Finding yourself face-to-face with a suspicious short and curly in a public loo is comedy gold. Okay so I'll admit, in the moment it's not all that hilarious. There may be much swearing and shaking of weak fists at the perverse nature of The Universe. There may even be a tear or two. But there is a moment when you move from overwhelming despair, wipe the best-left-unidentified goo from your cheek, and onto a moment of laughter. For example, that time in Myers during the pre-Christmas madness when I suddenly realised that I was lying there on sticky white tiles, as a distorted It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, spilled out of the crackling speaker overhead. A kind of hysterical laughing fit takes over at that point. But it's laughter nonetheless. When you've spent a large portion of the last 8 years becoming overly familiar with the communal stench-filled porcelain dotted throughout the state of Victoria, you learn to laugh.

There's a huge component of black humour involved in illness. If you have a chronic condition you quickly learn to embrace that humour. When you become ill you find yourself thrust into a bizarre world that becomes more and more Monty Python sketch and less and less normality, as time goes by. You are one of the unlucky few to discover that medicine doesn't have all the answers. Depending on your disorder you can discover it has none of the answers. And the actual living with illness is so far removed from the clinical details that it can seem like you have been diagnosed with the wrong condition. You can either embrace the ridiculous nature of your new environment or fight it. And for many like myself, the former is a far better option. But laughing at illness can make others uncomfortable, and frequently confused.

I've always had a dry sense of humour and since becoming ill it's taken on a life of its own. I've found that sarcasm doesn't always translate, especially across doctor's desks, or across international borders. Odd times I've made a joke and by the look on the face of my specialist you'd think I just told her I wanted to eat the stapler off her desk. It's a mix of confusion and worry, often accompanied by a slightly uncertain laugh, and tends to be quickly passed over. But even amongst family members and friends it can be hit and miss. I'll write a tweet or status update which in my head is dripping with sarcasm, but many will take it verbatim and send me concerned messages. If I end a passage with "Living the dream" odds are the preceding line or paragraph was sarcastic. Yes waking up on the bathroom tiles with a concerned Great Dane trying to French kiss me is foul, but it's also funny. And the fainting while trying to simply go to the loo, is kind of beside the point. It's not fun, but it's white noise by now. And really if you can't find the funny in being given the rancid breath of life by a giant dog while you try ineffectually to beat her away with your weak arms, you have missed the point.

And I should give a shout out to the poor pharmacy assistant who innocently asked me if the compression stockings I was enquiring about were for an elderly relative. I probably shouldn't have responded by saying that they were for me and that it's what all the girl's were wearing to turn on their elderly clients. Personally, I found that hilarious. Her, not so much. 

My husband and kids get it. They joke about me dying and them inheriting my vast fortune. This horrifies my parents, but leaves us pissing ourselves laughing. But then again we are the family that tormented each other by playing Burning Ring of Fire during our respective colonoscopy preps. They too have lived with my deteriorating health for the past 8 years. Whilst other people flit in and out they are the ones who have lived it with me, picked me up off the floor and wiped the drool from my mouth. They've seen it all and they too use humour to get by.

If you can't laugh about the full body floss (the dual fun of a colonoscopy and endoscopy) what can you laugh about? When you're neurologist is telling you bondage jokes during your tilt table test you have to giggle. When you manage to snort your Florinef into your left nostril rather than swallow thanks to an ill timed cough it is rather funny. When you're trying to put on your constrictive granny compression stockings and lose your grip and punch yourself in the face, that is worthy of laughter. When you are about to head into your pacemaker surgery and your husband makes a joke about The Borg Collective and his hopes that you'll turn into 7 of 9, you snort laugh. And when you realise that you're not going to get better you make jokes about your non-existent inheritance and the fact that your husband has no chance of scoring himself a hot replacement wife after you're gone. 

Because sarcasm and gallows humour is a fantastic coping technique. You need to be able to laugh at illness. To put it in it's place, and make it bearable.

It doesn't mean that I don't cry or feel overwhelmed by everything at times. It doesn't mean that it's not hard living with a deteriorating body, especially at the moment. But it does mean that I can write numerous blog posts about my porcelain lover's pine-fresh breath while a new medication is making me vomit repeatedly (see my short lived dalliance with Mestinon up in the Treatments section). And, after 8 years, I can still laugh.

I may be living a life part pain and sickness, part I Love Lucy and part The Machine that goes Ping, but the bizarro world of chronic illness is filled with comedy gold my friends. Comedy gold.

Michelle

Remember to head on over here to donate to my Clicking My Heels For Dysautonomia, raising money for the Greg Page Fund for Orthostatic Intolerance and Dysautonomia research, at The Baker IDI. Thanks to the generosity of many we've already raised over $2,000, keep donating and hopefully we can reach $10,000.