Interview
Identify someone with a chronic illness or disability. This could be a family member, or a friend, someone from your clinical site, or a client you care for at your work. Ask the person to tell you their story of their chronic condition.
You might use these questions to guide your interview and/or may think of other questions to add:
-How and when did you find out about the disability? Melanie was born three months early and we started noticing she wasn’t crawling, walking or sitting up…or showing any signs of getting to that goal. So we took her to a specialist when she was a little over a year, and found out that she had cerebral palsy.
- What path (trajectory) did the illness/disability take for your client compared to the typical pathology described in a textbook? Call me on this one, I don’t know know what was going on in the text book.
* When did they feel ill? What made you feel this way? How did you know? How did you cope during these times?
* She doesn’t really feel ill, however at times she wonders why she can’t walk like the other kids.
* For us coping through disability, was really hard at first. & some days it still is really hard. We have our good and bad days. It is really hard for us, to see her want to go play with other kids but she can’t.
- When did they feel well? what helped you feel well?
She usually always feels well, because she understands so much. Her cerebral palsy really just affects her physically not mentally. What helps feel well is her doing so awesome in school, and when we see her wanting and trying to walk, and be like the other kids.
Did the times they felt ill or well coincide with the times that they were the most sick physically/mentally?
Mentally Melanie is just like every other kid.
What do you think is the hardest to deal with considering the condition?
The hardest for us, is having to do everything for her… feeding, bathing, toileting, brushing teeth, helping her...
