To manage and deal with my illness I started support groups for my fellow spouses. I soon discovered the military program for dealing with illness within their ranks, the much toted EFMP (Exceptional Family Member Program), was a catch-all mainly for family members with school-age children. There is still no support in place for chronically ill spouses. The program will go out of its way to help you conquer and overcome a treatable disease but has no sustainable systems in place for diseases that have no cure. So, in response I started support groups and came to realize my story was not at all unique.
It seems that the first line of treatment with military medicine is not to figure out what is wrong with us but to tell us to eat right, lose some weight and exercise. If our visits and complaints of sheer exhaustion and general malaise continue, step two is to hand out psychotropic drugs. These are to help is “manage our undiagnosed pain.” Rarely is there testing or follow-ups outside of “let me check your thyroid.” (God forbid you have a thyroid overlap.)
The idea of treating someone with a chronic illness sends panic into the hearts of the average military provider. These doctors live in a world of treat and release, and the very idea that this is not curable and they cannot med board us out is beyond the scope of their culture. We chronically ill spouses have to fight and argue and fight some more to get someone to listen to us.
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