-
How do you process survivor’s guilt?
Lately I’ve been struggling with a lot of survivor’s guilt. I am exceeding expectations 2.5 years after my heart-lung transplant. Meanwhile, members of our community are not doing as well.
I’m thinking of @charlotte-gilbert and her husband @brian-gilbert as they go through recovery from her heart-lung transplant. I’m so grateful to her donor and medical team for making her transplant possible, but I know it is a long and difficult journey ahead. Charlotte will have a Tracheostomy today so send her good vibes please!
My dear friend, Anna, remains inpatient nearly 5 months after her heart-lung transplant. It has been one of the rockiest recoveries I’ve ever heard of. My recovery seemed difficult at the time, but I was discharged after 23 days. I honestly don’t know how she is still hanging in there and staying positive. She’s a warrior. I wish it weren’t so hard.
On Wednesday Mike Bonar passed away in the hospital, just over a month after his lung transplant. I didn’t know Mike personally, but his story affects me. It could easily have been my own.
All the losses of 2018 weigh on me and I’m trying to reconcile the blessings in my life with all the pain others are experiencing. I feel so lucky, but not in a way that makes me feel very good. Guilty may be the more appropriate term. Why am I still alive? Why me and not them? I know this isn’t a good question to ask and I’ll never find an answer, but I’m not sure what the better question is.
Do you ever feel this way? Do you see other people enduring more hardship and feel guilty for your own relative health? How do you process that guilt?
I put enough pressure on myself already to make sure I’m doing everything I can think of to honor my donor and the friends I’ve lost. As well as everything I can think of to express my gratitude to friends and family and strangers who make my health possible. I don’t think I can find meaning in the inequity of this disease. I don’t want to look.
How do you deal with how utterly unfair life is? I know this is just reality, but it’s bumming me out!
Log in to reply.