Coping with Chronic Medical Conditions

Do you suffer from a chronic medical condition?  Do you ever feel that your entire life revolves around your condition?

Panicare's objective is to provide patients with a number of potentially useful tools and strategies in order to help them:

    1.    cope with their medical conditions and the accompanying stress and restrictions,
    2.    lessen the pain associated with their conditions,
    2.    manage their moods and emotions, and
    3.    live full and productive lives in spite of their conditions.

Coping:        Patients with chronic conditions or illnesses often need to learn how to better cope with their conditions and with the stressful medical regimens that they must often follow.  They will also benefit by learning how to prevent their conditions from overwhelming them and preventing them from leading happy and productive lives.

Lessening the pain:      Patients can learn to lessen their experience of pain by learning a variety of self-help, cognitive and behavioral strategies.

Emotional Management:  Negative emotions and stress tend to exacerbate medical conditions.  If you are depressed of anxious due to your condition, your condition may get worse.  As your condition worsens, you might become more depressed or anxious.  You can learn to break this cycle.

                  
Negative emotions (aggravation, depression, anxiety, etc.):
                                            a)  can intensify your condition,
                                            b)  make you "feel" badly emotionally,
                                            c)  interfere with your ability to make good decisions,
                                            d)  interfere with your ability to enjoy your life, and
                                            e)  convince you that you are helpless and hopeless.
 
Cognitive-Behavior Therapy is a form of therapy that is specifically geared toward helping patients manage these negative emotions by teaching them a variety of skills and by helping them "see" things from a different, more health-promotive, perspective.
 

Lifestyle Modification:     Rather than giving up your life because of your medical condition, you can learn to "have a life" in spite of it.  Pain patients, as well as patients who are enduring any acute or chronic condition or disease, do better when they refuse to give up their activities and their lives.  As you read this you are probably saying to yourself that I "don't understand."  Well, I do understand.  I just don't agree with you.  You should, and can, continue to have a rewarding life, even if you are burdened by medical problems.  If you think that you can't, then you probably won't.  But, you can.

You can learn to live happily ever after, despite your chronic medical condition.