Chronic Illness

Chronic Illness

This month was my 4 year anniversary of my journey with breast cancer. I started this blog talking about my cancer experience. Feel free to check out my posts from 2021 where I have shared not only about my cancer but how much it affected me and was the start of my mental health struggles. The great thing about having a blog is it’s like my own personal history book that I can look back to and see what happened then, what’s changed, and what’s continued. I have not really struggled with memories of my cancer and everything associated but this year seems different. 

I started working a real job at 15 and have only ever missed a handful of work days until the last 4 years. As a self employed person for 25 of those years, most weeks I worked 60 plus hours a week, on call 24/7/365 for many years. I was always considered very dependable and a good hard worker, willing to do whatever was needed to help. 

Recently in conversation it was said to me how I have chronic illnesses that really affect my life. It caused me to stop and take pause as I never thought of myself in that way. Not that it isn’t true now, but for me having illness period let alone chronic illnesses is new and sadly now my reality. I never really considered how people who have met me in the last 4 years perceive me. But they’ve not seen me any other way so of course they can only go on what they know. It kind of shocked me and makes me sad at the same time.

It’s hard to adjust to my new reality. Yes, it’s been 4 years since things started for me, but to think so much has happened that it’s now chronic is challenging and frustrating. What makes illness chronic is the lack of a way to make changes or improvements to the illness. In other words, western medicine has no answers, so you’re stuck with whatever it is because they have nothing to offer you. 

Some things like osteoarthritis can be chronic but it can also just be a disorder that can be helped through joint replacements, physical therapy, medication, and more. But it can also become chronic if none of those things work for you. When you have something there’s no answers for like I do, I’m now considered and labeled chronic. 

I know how that label makes me feel but I also know how that label affects others judgement of me. I have seen so many health care providers roll their eyes at patients when issues like fibromyalgia and other immune system or umbrella term diagnoses like autonomic nervous system disorders, are discovered in their history. It’s like you aren’t taken seriously anymore because of your illness, like you’re some kind of attention seeking hypochondriac.

Years ago many thought these things were all just bullshit diagnosis in order to give a name to things that medicine couldn’t figure out. Thankfully much has changed in testing and knowledge of all these “chronic” type disorders and we now know there really are reasons for all those symptoms. 

Lately the narrative seems to try to say all illness and pain is your head and therapy can cure just about anything. I don’t buy that totally but that’s a subject for another blog post as there’s much I’d like to say about it. Stay tuned as it will be upcoming!

Here I am, retired but struggling with chronic illness, physical and mental. I’m not always sure how to navigate it, especially alone, as it is fairly new in my life. Sixty two years with no issues turned into 4 years of health struggles. 

Breast cancer was just the start of it all for me. Luckily I can say I am cancer free but the other stuff isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I don’t know, deal with it, get over it, move on seems to be the messages I get each time a provider tells me they have no answers, dismiss me and tell me to go see someone else. Eventually I ran out of places to go and I do just deal with it because I don’t have any other options or hope for any other way. 

For me, these health struggles suck but it truly is my new reality. Chronic illnesses. I’m told non acceptance of things keep you suffering. I’m not sure about that as for me it feels more like giving up and giving in. 

8.30.25