Here are some invisible illnesses:
Allergies and food intolerances
Arthritis, especially rheumatoid
Cancer
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Fibromyalgia
Depression and mental illness
Diabetes
Digestive disorders such as Celiac, colitis, and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
Migraine and headache sufferers
Heart conditions
Lupus
Lyme Disease
Multiple Sclerosis
Infertility
Sjogren’s Syndrome
If you suffer from an invisible illness you really do get an extra layer in your trifle of complaints. This layer is I call isolation, certainly not a delish layer of cream!
Not only are you isolated because you cannot always (NOT NEVER) join in with a lot of things that the others around you are doing but you are also isolated mentally. If you have every sufferd with any issues with your mental health you know that this can be such a difficult time and not something that can be quickly fixed and maintained.
So not only physically are you set upon but your mind is too. The odd days were mentally your keen, excited and want to make plans but your body has a very different idea. I can tell you this from experience, living with these conditions is living in a permanent state of frustration. Add your pain layer, your exhausted layer, weakness layer, heavy layer, nausea layer, head in a vice layer and the energy sucked out of you layer these are tough times. For me and this may not be the case for everyone but it has taken me years to get to the point of acceptence I now have for my conditions. To be at this point I have had to grieve for what was, before this I just could not accept it which as you can imagine led to me being the worst I have ever been and missed important family days and life in general. I missed my older brothers 40th! At this point I was so ill and completely defeated. I think of this time often and promise myself I cannot let myself get to that place again.
With these types of conditions annoyingly you tend not to just have the one, usually there are multiple problems going on. Although I feel like my body has let me down at the same time it is amazing that it copes as well as it does and I am here living my life. It baffles me how it can keep this up with all the mayhem that is going on.
You have to plan everything to a tee because of the payback, one good night out and let's just say the 'hangover' can last way past a week.... So you must choose your moments wisely! As I am writing this I am feeling rough as.. sleep was not my friend last night, the constant overuse of adrenaline just would not let me get to sleep and before I knew it the school run was here. Thankfully today is a day that I have some help, however tomorrow it is just little old me.... I am feeling the doom already.
One of the ways I have learnt to detect I have a flare approaching is I crave sugary rubbish all day, every day and have no desire for real food. If I give into this, which is hard not to by the way, the constant bad sugary rubbish then makes me feel dreadful and BOOM... CRASH TIME.
SO with these conditions you can live in a house with many people but yet there is a real loneliness about it all. It is nobody's fault that they cannot understand, how could anyone?
The main issue is that on the outside your body doesn't LOOK broken so people have a real hard time being able to see you as sick. Plus we are the masters of putting on a front, right?! Even at your worst you will still try to sugar coat how you are feeling so the others around you are not impacted by it all. We have enough guilty feelings as it is, so any way to minimise this we will give it a try.
THE STIGMA - created by ignorant people.
People saying it is all in your head, it is not real etc.. is a HUGE problem that still exists. This HAS to STOP! I am going to raise as much awareness as possible to try and help END THE STIGMA. It is only now after the pandemic that long covid is becoming more frequent and now it is like 'hey this is rubbish, I know let's look into it' - which I am so glad of, just wish they listened to US all this time....
I saw a post resently which said 'If I was faking it why would I pick a condition nobody believes.' Enough said!!! Why on earth would you choose this with all the stigmas and uncertainty around it?
These are lonely, hard and life changing conditions. If you meet someone who has one or MORE of these conditions please do NOT judge them. BE KIND AND SUPPORTIVE.
You never know it could happen to you one day x
Comment below and let me know your thoughts.
Gentle hugs,
Tracey x