How to Love Someone With a Chronic Illness
You are not a doctor and other things to remember
What do you mean normal people don’t feel fatigued like this? What do you mean that crushing, clutching, collapsing pool that opens in my chest like a black hole isn’t normal? What do you mean the bloating and body aches are not ‘reasonable’ to live with? What do you mean most people don’t experience these skull-shattering, vision blurring splinters in their brain? You mean, most people live without this?
The current hypothesis is that I’ve been sick my whole life. It has just disguised itself as other things for most of my life or it was just subtle enough to make me think this was all normal. It wasn’t until whole bunch of symptoms slammed me in one go eight years ago that I knew something was very wrong.
I don’t remember what came first. Maybe it was the migraines. Or maybe it was the waves of nausea that would roll in, making eating impossible. Or vomiting. Maybe it was the onset of regular vomiting. One bite of the ‘wrong’ thing and it all came up except anything could be the wrong thing. It just depended on the day.
And naturally, almost as if nature demanded it, everyone around me seemed to have an opinion. Every friend and stranger on the street come out of the woodwork as a doctor or healer or specialist of all that is wrong with you and…
