Charmaz immediately describes experience of living with a chronic illness within the title; it’s the “loss of self”. Our unique abilities and the people we surround ourselves with form our own identity and that’s “crumbled(ing) away” when you are hit with a chronic disease as you lose these points and cannot attain an equivalent new one with the chronic disease. There are many ways in which this is inflicted, through not being as self sufficient any more, becoming a burden on family, friends and even society, limited social interaction and even being labelled (stigmatised) with the disease. These factors often go against what she describes as the American ideal of having control over and being free to choose their own levels “independence, privacy and family autonomy”. This is further exacerbated in that losing these facets of self identity leads to more time to ruminate on these issues which then create a vicious cycle of reducing self worth.
Looking at the videos about the experience of living with rheumatoid arthritis, the common theme is that upon diagnosis was the reality of having to change your life around the illness. This in itself creates a focus for reminding the individual that they have rheumatoid arthritis; it’s part of their identity now, in much the same way Charmaz interviewed an individual with a renal failure and how the dialysis machine is part of them, and how they hated that. There are also preconceived ideas that arthritis is what “little old ladies” get, again a jarring juxtaposition to what some of the young women identify themselves as. Overall however I felt that whilst Charmaz’s paper painted a negative portrayal of living with a chronic disease, a lot of the videos I saw were people being positive whilst taking in the reality of their condition and what it brings.
