7 Signs You’re Living With A Chronic Illness

1. Your pajama’s are likely overflowing into another drawer and if you’re like me you also have a wide variety of seasonal Pj’s.

Silver lining: Hopefully you love pj’s like I always have so buying yet another pair is exciting.

2. You now have great appointment scheduling skills and have learned to write them down in several places in case you forget. You are also skilled at dealing with what happens when one reschedule results in a cascade of reschedules.

Silver lining: Not too sure, maybe when we get better we could add professional scheduler to our resumes? 😉

3. The things you can eat continues to narrow and going outside the list means payback, but sometimes you just have to live a little.

Silver lining: You now have extensive nutritional knowledge with relation to your illness, which likely far exceeds your GP’s.

4. You’ve learned to accept that your social life no longer has many commonalities with your ‘well-friends’. Your things-to-talk-about include random new symptoms and doctors appointments that nobody but another spoonie could possibly relate to.

Silver lining: Chronic illness communities on social media totally get you.

5. You’ve seemingly heard all the remedies and you’ve even tried some of them.

Silver lining: You’re now intimately familiar with how to cure almost anything according to someone’s aunt’s, brother’s, uncles, sister’s advice.

6. You swear if one more person says they’re tired like you are or they get tired too you’re going to think of a great comeback, but brainfog will keep you from remembering it anyway, so instead you nod and silently have a variety of strong feelings.

Silver lining: Patience is a virtue?

7. And lastly you remind yourself that on your baseline days this could be as good as it gets and you try to make peace with that while simultaneously trying to do what it takes to feel better than that.

Silver lining: You’re stronger and braver than you ever imagined you could have been. You’ve faced fears many will never know, and you’ve faced them head on with grace and dignity.  

So what do you get if all seven signs are relatable? Well, I suppose the comfort in knowing that you aren’t alone. There are many of us out here fighting the same dragons, each and every day. My inbox is always open if you need support. A few more of my little doodles below as I follow along with the daily prompts from World Watercolor Group on Instagram. Thank you for stopping by and hoping today brings you smiles.