Learning From My Illness
Living with Common Variable Immune Deficiency has shaped the way I sit with people far more than any textbook ever could. When your own body becomes unpredictable, when fatigue and infections rearrange your plans, when medicine keeps you stable but never quite cured, you begin to understand vulnerability in a different way.
My journey with CVID has taught me that chronic illness is not only a medical condition, it is an existential experience. It raises questions about identity, control, fairness, isolation, and meaning. The world becomes rearranged when your energy is limited, when your future feels uncertain, when you must measure your days in spoons and lab values. These questions sit at the heart of existential philosophy, and they now sit at the heart of my work as a mentor.
Humanistic philosophy assumes that people possess an innate drive toward growth and wholeness. Living with CVID has deepened my trust in that assumption. I have seen in myself the quiet determination to create, to write poetry, to build connection, even when my immune system falters. Illness did not erase the drive toward meaning. When I work with others who live with chronic conditions, I hold that same faith in their capacity. Not a naive optimism that everything is going to be alright, but a grounded belief that even within physical limits, the human spirit continues to reach. Existential philosophy has also shaped the way I understand suffering. CVID introduced me to uncertainty in a way that is ongoing. There is no final chapter where the illness disappears. There is management, adaptation, and learning how to live alongside what cannot be controlled. This has helped me sit with clients without rushing to fix or reframe their pain. I know the way it can shrink a life and, at the same time, invite a deeper one.
As a chronic illness mentor, I do not approach people as someone who has solved suffering. I approach them as someone who has walked through it and continues to walk through it. My own diagnosis reminds me to listen carefully, to respect the pace of the body, to honor grief, and to search gently for meaning rather than impose it. CVID has made me more patient with fragility, more attentive to what remains, and more committed to helping others build lives that feel authentic within the realities they face. In my case, it has woven humanism and existential thought into something lived, not merely studied.
Dr. Jeffrey Bone