The ugly truth…… the lives of people who are chronically ill are often not what you may think. Most suffer a lot more than they are willing to share. We fight something everyday, whether it’s pain or fatigue or just feeling bad overall. And naturally we don’t want to seem like we are always negative. We don’t want to appear like there is nothing good in our life, so often times we hide all the bad and just talk about the good. But after awhile this gets old and too hard to keep up the lies. So we just stop talking to people and start shutting people out because if we don’t see them or talk to them you don’t have to lie about what is really going on. For a good majority of people with chronic illness even on the days when we “look and sound good,” we are still fighting some part of our disease process. There are very few days where we feel “normal.”
I recently read a statistic that said that 80% of people with chronic pain/illness will hide their pain and symptoms from friends and love ones. At first I thought this was a crazy statistic but the more I thought about it I really believe that’s true. We don’t want looks of pity or for people to feel sorry for us and by keeping things to ourselves this is less likely to happen. If we don’t share we don’t have to worry about what others will think or say about us.
It is really easy to pass judgement on someone you don’t know who looks fine. You see a overweight young women getting out of a her car that is parked in a handicapped spot, and think there’s nothing wrong with her she’s just fat! Almost all of us have all done this at some point, myself included. But we should all really think twice about spewing judgement! By just assuming something about someone you don’t know at all or someone that you are close to you make them feel badly about themselves, and make them not want to go out to do things. Just because they look fine doesn’t mean they are not fighting something on the inside. I know for me it’s easier to just not say anything about the amount of pain I live with. Simply because people will want to pass judgement on my pain, my lifestyle or how I treat my pain. But honestly it’s no one else’s business.
If you see a young person limping or parking in a handicap spot don’t always assume they are jut lazy or overweight. They could have any number of health problems that you could never see. Heart disease, lung issues like asthma or COPD, cancer, Lupus, RA etc. Same goes for anyone really, not just those that are young. I read somewhere that 80% of older people have one chronic illness, while 50% have at least two! I know how easy it is to place judgement, but until you have walked in their shoes you will never know what’s really going on in their life.
The ugly truth is that most people with chronic illness have very few really good days. Often times the bad days outweigh the good. That being said you may not know this because they don’t tell you. But it’s just the truth. Most people with chronic pain won’t ever tell anyone just how bad their pain is and how much it impacts them daily because they don’t want the judgement. In these days people hear chronic pain and automatically think druggie. What you don’t know is that many of us would rather do anything than take pain meds. If we could work a full time job and be a truly functioning member of society we would! For me personally I would give basically anything to be able to go back to working as a Nurse. I miss it ALL the time and often reminisce about the days when I was able to work. I never wanted to end up like I have. But it happens. Anyone can experience a life changing illness or accident. It’s not just a certain kind of person who these things happen to. So be mindful of that. Be mindful before you pass judgement and before you say hateful things to someone. You probably know next to NOTHING about what their life on a daily basis is like.
