Charmaz in her paper talks about various consequences that patient and his family has to face due to chronic illness. She talks about the isolation that takes over patients and they lose their own self for various psychological reasons. For example this 25yr old patient when interviewed said he can't meet up with friends for drinks at night anymore while another young patient spoke about not being able to travel for over 2weeks due to her regular blood tests. Another woman mentions that she can't be with people in their hard times which has socially isolated her .
I found interesting how A woman spoke about feeling independent and more confidant just by having a car in her porch although she hasn't driven it for 6 months.
Loss of self is another thing mentioned by the author example a patient in his interview speaks about losing two years of his life just trying to make peace with his new self which was unable to do things he used to when he was well.
Another thing i observed in the interviews was that most of the people had a similar reaction of anger, shock to the disease while some were also relieved to finally have the disease diagnosed. Like one woman went to her GP thrice and each time he sent her back with ibuprofen so she cried with the sense of relief once she was diagnosed
While another patient was angry that she had always done good things in life then why did she get RA.
What I found interesting, was how most of the patients do overcome the psychological effects of diseases with time and learn to live with it and start a fresh life, infact use the disease as a tool for self discovery.
