Writing Prompts: Illness

I have Lyme disease which has a myriad of symptoms including depression, fibromyalgia, severe migraines, and fatigue. As much as I hate being in pain and non-functional, the pain has taught me more about how other people feel. I always had sympathy but now I have empathy for the frustration and hopelessness that a chronic illness brings. One way that I reach out to others with that empathy is through my writing. I also find that when the pain is extreme, writing about it distracts me enough for medicine to help, and by the time I am finished writing, I am much better. I also find writing about it is uplifting just by reason of having accomplished something. I am not completely useless if I have accomplished some writing.

When the pain is not severe, the details of just how bad it is may slip away. After all, admitting just how horrible the illness is and how much control it has over my life is about as depressing as life can get. To recall illness then, requires an effort. Close your eyes and think back to when you have been ill. Inventory each part of your body, traveling slowly through it and register how it felt. Write it all down. If you haven't been ill at all, imagine a person you know who copes with pain, depression, or other limitations. Remember how she or he moves, the way his voice may change with fatigue or pain, or how her face becomes rigid or her eyebrows lower, scrunching up in pain. What must his thoughts be? How does she process her illness? How does illness limit his activities or career?

Try this exercise with a child in mind, someone of the same sex as you and then the opposite. Does the expression of illness vary with people from different cultures? Does race sometimes impact the communication of illness? Try illness on one of your characters. Would he go to a doctor? Would she use homeopathic remedies or prescriptions?

If your character has friends or family, how do they perceive her illness? Do they believe he is a hypochondriac or take his illness seriously? What would you or your character do if confronted with an incurable, short-term illness? For example, what if a doctor found the presence of a 4th stage cancer? What things are left to accomplish? Where is it you have never gone and want to go? Is there any need to make amends? Are there regrets or none at all?

What if an illness that is supposed to be fatal suddenly seems to be reversed? How will you or your characters react? Look up a the stages of grief and see which ones your character goes through. Does he get stuck in one of them? Would anyone be able to help him move forward? Is she suicidal? Does she move to Oregon to get help ending her life?

Now, imagine your character's child is ill. Try just the flu, then try chicken pox, a chronic illness, and a fatal one. How does your character cope or change? What support system does she have? Does he withdraw into his online community or take an active role in supporting his child?

Here are a few of the poems I have written in response to illness. In the first, depression comes to life as an evil jester. In the second, a woman copes with the devastating effects of rheumatoid arthritis or some other extremely limiting disease. They are also posted on FanStory. The last ones are posted on www.mykuworld.com on a board called "Thirst"

The Ventriloquist

Today, my head hurts, the rest of me not far behind.
Depression rears his crowned head
appears like some evil jester in cream and gold with belled cuffs.
He shakes his rough blond mane, displays a lopsided grin, tongue lolling out,
lewdly, Depression laughs, knowing he has won the point-
I am become easy prey to his mockery.
He closes with me, isolates me,
his bitter fumes acrid to my senses; he obscures my view of humanity.
I am unwanted, trapped, a failure.
I wish there were some email, some friend calling right now
some proof that I am not alone.
Depression’s voice speaks in my mind-
he is a ventriloquist, a clever trickster,
speaking with my voice from deep within my brain.
I struggle to separate him from myself, extract the invasive tentacles.
He chants of rejection and loss, inserting the freed suckers into another pink and grey fold;
he is, by nature, overwhelming, and so brilliant.
He excels at his work, but he is also proud...
I use his words to draw him out on paper, he prances and preens,
crowing his victory, he is no longer vigilant.
Depression does not see that I am pinning him down, a beetle in a glass case,
robbing his life through the science of naming him.
Depression has become imprisoned, wriggling under my magnifying glass,
tentacles withdrawn, shrunken.
His voice fades to nothing in the light of day.


Hollow Bones

Sinew, muscles, skeleton, all affirm she has a fragile framework.
In her coiled pain, she feels neither pretty nor womanly anymore-
hollowed bones, claw-like hands and feet.
She perches on an escarpment,
imagines herself an ancient kittiwake diving on scuttling red crabs.
When a mistral blows up a squall, she will rise
to skim above the spume-tipped waves.
She likes the thought of it, soaring in the sky with the wind in her face
ascending in helical flight, a dizzying upward spin into the heavens.
She’ll strike off parallel to the coast, flying north
until she meets a swooping red and white diamond,
a kite she and her father flew seventy years ago.
Mirroring its cavorting jig, she will not stop until her heart is done.
She will plummet headlong into the foaming surf.
Before a wave crests, she will rise again,
to skim, roll and swoop,
ethereal spectral seagull.



Thirst

Pain is my shepherd who
leads me to muddy waters,
tears my soul; remnants
thirst among the ruins.

Quenched

Just for a moment,
or an hour, the pain
eases; feet still clumsy,
I imagine a dance of joy.

Refuge

Velvet hammer in guise
of pharmaceutical bliss
can slam the pain away
with its velveteen kiss.

Katherine A Minden ©2009