Learning to live with chronic illness in later life: Empowering myself

Author: Alexandra Withnall

Edition: Volume 57, Number 3, November 2017

Summary: Type 2 Diabetes is both an incurable illness and a hidden disability that has reached epidemic proportions on a global scale. It has obviously spawned a huge clinical literature, but no scholarly accounts of learning to live with the illness on a daily basis from a feminist perspective. As an older woman, I have made use of a somewhat controversial autoethnographical approach to explore how far I consider myself empowered to live with, and manage this condition for the rest of my life. Self-management is an idea that is central to both the United Kingdom (UK) National Health Service (NHS) philosophy of supporting patient choice and within a feminist perspective on health care. Learning to identify, access and use the necessary resources to manage my condition suggests that there are regional differences within the UK as to how much practical care diabetes patients are offered or can access. The paternalistic nature of the health care team/patient relationship appears to militate against the concept of patient empowerment.

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 57:3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.