Yesterday wasn’t a good day health wise. I woke with a jolt as I must have turned in my sleep and at the base of my back the pain was eye watering. As the morning wore on the top of my legs to my knees became numb and from the knees downwards major pain and cramping. This lasted all day and by the night my whole body was throbbing with pain and spasms until the early hours when I managed to sleep for a few hours. My back is still hurting and my legs are starting to pain again so it looks like another day of similar symptoms..
I do wonder if once you have a chronic condition, others come along too. I started by having endometriosis, then M.E then Fibromyalgia, and this seems to be the case for many people, they have two or more chronic conditions. Does the damage the first chronic condition causes makes it easier for other conditions to develop as your body is at a low point? Or are all of these conditions simmering away under the surface and then gradually make themselves known? I have no idea, but now I have thought about it I will have a look on the net and see if there is any link.
I have had people ask when I tell them I’m not working at the moment due to the severity of my conditions ‘but, what do you DO all day..? This is a question that I find not only idiotic but incredibly rude and degrading. I’m not the sort of person to feel I need to explain myself to anyone, as long as I know why I am doing something, living a certain way and I am not hurting anyone, I don’t feel answering such questions is a top priority. I usually say that with chronic conditions every task takes twice or three times the time a well person will take to complete. If they become genuinely interested in my conditions I am happy to talk about the basics of it, but if that same sanctimonious nose is still in the air I suggest to them that maybe they should learn about something and how it affects people before they judge anyone. People like that annoy me so much, making judgement calls and looking down their nose at you without knowing the facts of the subject and expecting you to explain yourself to them and prove you aren’t just a benefit bum. I don’t lower myself to their level, I refuse too, but sometimes I struggle not to tell them to.. well, to go something themselves… but I don’t because they know then they are getting to me and are winning their ridiculous notion of being right.
It’s bad enough we aren’t receiving the treatment we deserve and respect from the medical profession, let alone from people in everyday life. As I wrote before, my friend of 23 years said something very patronising to me when I told her about my M.E and hasn’t been in contact since. But for complete strangers to judge you, someone who doesn’t know you, how you were before you became ill, anything about your conditions is to me someone I will not explain myself to or have anything to do with.
I wasn’t always a sick person, I was an able and active part of society and life. I could walk, run, have a body that didn’t spasm and seize, didn’t have massive pain in every part. I could wake at 6am get straight out of bed, and not fall back into it until 3am when my day was done and repeat that process every day. Who I am now, how my body and health is now is a far far cry from how and who I was and at times I struggle with that physically and emotionally because I remember how I used to be. My chronic conditions have caused me to become at 33 years old labled as disabled and no longer in control of my own body let alone my own life.
I didn’t choose this, nobody with chronic condition/s chose to have them attack their bodies so viciously and we certainly don’t need to be judged by someone who has no knowledge let alone any empathy towards our conditions. If you don’t understand and want to, then learn, but if you don’t want to learn or understand then kindly keep your opinions to yourself because quite frankly, your opinions and nose is not wanted in my life.
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Fibro and M.E 