I often get told “Wow, I don’t know how you do it, I wouldn’t be able to do it!”

My reply “I don’t have a choice, and you could do it”! It’s easy to say I couldn’t be able to handle that because you aren’t going through it, but when you are, you don’t have any other choice! 

I didn’t choose the chronic illness life, the chronic illness life chose me! Why this happens, I will never know, but it happens too much to a lot of people! When you are faced with this painful new life, it is extremely hard to deal with in the beginning, actually it is always hard, but sadly you get used to living with it and you adjust accordingly to get the most out of this life!

With the help of family , friends and doctors, you learn how to manage it and live with it! Sometimes it get really bad and you just can’t handle it well and that is going to happen a lot! No matter how used to this new painful life you get, it is always going to be hard! You can’t do everything that you used to be able to do! You now have to depend on more people, even for simple tasks and that is very hard to do!

You could be part of the lucky group of people and find a way to manage all the pain and fun that comes with these chronic illnesses, to where you can live a more active and better life. There will still be times where it will knock you down for a while, but that will eventually ease up and you can get back to the fun! If you are not blessed enough to be part of that group, I truly hope that you have a good support system, especially if you can’t work and they deny you disability! Depending on the illness, that is something that is hard to get!

Having a chronic illness is not only very painful and exhausting, it is also extremely frustrating because some of them don’t show up on any test that the doctors run. You are now stuck with having to figure out how to live with it and you also have to deal with all the people that don’t believe you or understand your illness, because you don’t look sick. Although you don’t owe them any explanations, it can be hurtful and frustrating that they don’t believe you and trying to prove it all, although you seriously don’t have to prove anything! You know what is going on with your body, just getting the right help can be difficult!

I often thought , why don’t people support causes until they have to deal with what illness the cause supports! Well, the answer is pretty simple, they don’t do it because they don’t fully understand until they or a family member has to go through it! Then they will research and learn more about it in efforts to fix it and support it! If only it were simpler than that!

It is very true that you will never understand it until you have to deal with it, no matter how much you research it, you still get more and better knowledge when you have to live it! I promise you that you can and will learn to deal with it! Well, mostly, as these illnesses always have a way of surprising you! You will find something that helps you to some degree or possibly more!