There are many annoying or upsetting things people can do or
say to someone. That list of nuisances gets even longer when you are a
chronically ill teenager. A examples of minor pet peeves to someone chronically
ill like me include, when people say “you’re too young to be that sick/in that
amount of pain,” when that is completely not true, because sadly illness does
not discriminate Next there are the people who try to “fix” me by suggesting a
million different vitamins, protein shakes or whatever else Dr. Oz claimed was
the key to health on his show that day. The last small pet peeve of mine is
when people get all serious and sympathetically tell me “at least it’s not
cancer,” that five word phrase is like that person saying my disease is less
important or not as debilitating as cancer is, but it’s not. No, I may not be
dying, and this disease probably won’t kill me but that doesn’t mean it hurts
any less or that it’s any less frightening. Now those three examples are some
of the small pet peeves that I have about the way society views and treats
people with chronic illnesses, but there is one pet peeve, that for me stands
out about the rest and is the one that hurts the most.
My
biggest chronic illness pet peeve is when people just assume
that I feel too sick or am in too much pain to go to a movie, or sleep over, or
go to the mall, or to do anything else with my friends, without asking me how I
actually feel. This pet peeve has many different levels to it
and ways people can contribute to it. One of those ways is when I log onto
Facebook and see my friends posting pictures on of our entire friend group out
having fun, when I wasn’t even asked to join them. When I see those pictures
it’s like seeing my friends move on ever so slowly or in some cases quickly
until we have grown so far apart that I have been totally forgotten about. The
next is when I have talked to someone about going to do a specific thing, like
going to Splash Island (and agreed to set a date and time later), but then said
person goes ahead and goes to Splash Island with someone else and doesn’t
include or even invite me. And when confront with why they went ahead without
me, the person states that because a post on my medical page, which I use to
keep people updated on my condition and raise awareness, said I was in pain.
Yes I said I was in pain and not feeling well on my medical page, but that
doesn’t mean I want to stay at home bound to my bed, because if I did that
every time I feel sick or am in pain with my illness being genetic and lifelong,
I would never leave my bed as I am always in pain and constantly feel sick.
Overall,
the point to this post is to help people who are not chronically ill understand
some of the things a chronically ill person feels when we are just going
through everyday life. So please watch what you say, illness isn’t picky about
who it chooses to strike. Think before you suggest, while we all love Dr. Oz
and he does have some good tips; people with chronic illnesses have dozens of specialized doctors standing behind us and
most times if taking medicine A, B, or C or eating diet D has any chance of
increasing our quality of life you can bet we have already tried it. Show some
compassion, those of us with chronic illnesses often struggle to get proper
treatment or there is often not a real treatment at all the doctors just mask
the symptoms, with that said there is still no illness that is any better or
any worse to have than any other, all illnesses cause physical, mental, and
emotional pain and each bring about their own unique struggle.
And
last but not least ASK the person you know who
has a chronic illness if they want to come with you on a girls’/guys’ day out,
or a movie night, or simply ask if they want to come over and have a sleepover don’t
just assume we are too sick to do anything or go anyplace. More often than not,
if we know you well enough we are going to say yes even on days we are not
feeling good. Why? Because if we sit around waiting for a good day to come we
are missing everything happening right now.
