Life as a Survivor With Chronic Illness
Never judge a book by its cover.
Hi, my name is Elizabeth, I am a stroke survivor, and I have fibromyalgia. Sometimes you feel as if you should have a sign on your back since neither of these is visible from the outside. They are things that will be with me for the rest of my life, and I wish that people were more understanding of chronic conditions.
Fibromyalgia would come first. I was diagnosed 10 years ago. There are a lot of people who don’t understand it because it can manifest differently in each person. For me, it is a pain in most of my joints, fatigue, and brain fog. The pain has caused me to gain weight, and that, of course, does not help with how people look at you. I have heard far too many times that if I lost weight, it would get better. Ah, if only it were that easy. The hardest part can be getting people to understand that this does not go away, and it is my new normal.
I would love to use the scooters at the grocery store on bad days but instead, I just don’t go anymore because of one of those judgemental encounters. I don’t know if people just don’t think about the things they say or they just don’t care or maybe they truly do mean for you to hear.
For me, it was a couple of people in line behind me who made the comments. They said there was probably nothing…
