Does Chronic Disease effect identity?

With many discussions and readings on identity , our task is to create a question, an interest, a topic for discovery, for which we will write an inquiry paper on. Before about a week ago I had no idea what inquiry was, and how it related to argumentative writing. I like to believe that I understand it somewhat better now, after a few class discussions. Inquiry may be better summed up as the authors thought process. It provides a writer with the opportunity to explain why they want to research a certain topic and how they do so. It is essentially a process of exploration and questioning. The author finds sources that seem relevant to their overall interests and then must analyze them, determining what other people are saying about the topic of interest and how he himself feels about what these other authors are saying. The writer may agree or disagree with his sources but ultimately will link them all together in an effort to reach an overall claim, an overall analysis or attempt at understanding. The end of the paper may come as an epiphany but the opposite may also occur, and one may be left with confusion and many further questions.

With much brainstorming and limited sources at this moment, I find myself interested in how external forces, such as having a chronic disease, may contribute to one view of one's "self." I wonder if having a chronic disease changes how one views oneself. This may prove a difficulty topic to investigate, but perhaps I can search for case-studies or comparisons between patients views of themselves prior and after diagnosis if diagnosis occurred later in life, and then even compare the role disease plays on identity in patients who have always had the disease in comparison to someone who lived a greater portion of their life without it and had a later onset.

One of the reasons that I became interested in this topic is because my roommate has type I Diabetes. She was diagnosed when she was 12 and says that its impact on her life had in fact redefined her identity in respect to how she views the world. Frequently visiting hospitals growing up she said that she became grateful that she had a disease that is treatable, for she saw many people in her ER visits who were not as fortunate, those who were receiving cancer treatments and had been in car accidents. Each time she went she had the comfort of knowing that at least she knew she would be able to return to her family and friends. She also said that having the disease makes you realize your life might not be as long and makes you a more positive person, for you want to have a happy life and make every day count. Overall, she views events and situations with an entirely different perspective once she was diagnosed and now has a different view on the world. I would like to further explore this idea, and if anyone has any suggestions for me, I would love to hear them.