An Explanation

     This isn't my first blog site, but from what little research I have done, this seems to be a site that attracts the most readers, so I switched several months ago.  People blog for many reasons--to vent about bad jobs, bosses, companies, to complain about how unfair life is, to gossip about the latest in celebrity trash, inform others of interesting events that are going on or soon to go on, and just to babble about their mundane, boring lives, just to list a few reasons. Then there's others like myself who started blogging in hopes to reach even one person to help. 
     I've made it no secret since I started that I have several chronic illnesses and "something else" that the doctors can't figure out.  I have symptoms that overlap many diseases, lab tests that come back abnormal, but no specific positive test results for many things, and one specialist passing me off to another in an attempt to get a full picture.  I also live with my mother who has end-stage renal failure.  Between living with my own chronic illnesses and living with a loved one who also has a life changing chronic illness, my aim was and is to maybe get the chance to help someone else living with chronic illness, or to help a loved one of someone who has learn a little bit more about what people like us go through and develop a better understanding of what we go through.
    "You look fine or normal," "You're just too lazy to do anything with yourself,"  "It's nothing, you just have to tell yourself that you're not really sick and it'll go away on it's own.  "Mind over matter." are just a few of the most common lines ignorant people use.  Having diseases like chronic Lyme, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Lupus (just to give a few examples) are real.  And with them come real symptoms, real lifestyle changes, but unfortunately, no universal treatments.  We all look normal from the outside.  As a whole, we don't have missing or disfigured limbs, obvious signs of illness other than looking completely exhausted (thank you Olay Products for hiding dark under eye circles!) and as difficult for a person with any of these illnesses or others that fall into the "invisible illness" category, it is more difficult for friends, families, and loved ones to understand. 
     Think of it this way:  if someone says they have cancer, it is easier to believe because cancer is such a prevalent and devastating disease, but there are treatments that work.  It's also easy to understand on some level a person with MS, MD, or RA.  There are physical symptoms that others can see.  FMS, CFS, Lupus, Chronic Migraines, et al are called "invisible" for a reason.  It's easy enough to judge and insult someone with an invisible illness than it is to do any kind of research about what they are, what the symptoms are, and what it does to a person who has one. 
     Getting sick and being diagnosed with any invisible, chronic illness is without a doubt life changing.  By the time a diagnosis comes, a person has already suffered the alienation from friends and family, many have had to quit their jobs because they are just too sick.  Then comes the aftermath.  Life is completely changed for that person and their family.  Doctors in general are more concerned with treating the physical symptoms to make a patient comfortable than they are treating the mental and emotional side of what a chronic illness causes. The basic logic from most medical professionals is "treat the physical, the mental will improve."  This is rarely the case.  People with whom you considered friends are in the wind because you can't go out and do whatever, whenever because you just don't feel well enough to go.  Eventually, they stop calling to ask. 
        In essence, while some of my blogs are about nothing in particular except maybe a recent news report, an interesting event, or just a random bit of rambling, others are about what it's life to not only be a person with a chronic illness(es), but different treatments, ideas, changes, ups and downs, stress and stressors, and life in general, including the awesomeness of those friends who have stuck around through all of it, those who fail to understand it and left, and peoples' reactions in general.  It is also about what it's like to live with someone who is dealing with a chronic illness and the changes to their life as well.  So, even if my writing reaches just one person who is living with a chronic illness, or a person living with someone with a chronic illness and takes away something positive from it and uses it to make life even just a tiny bit better, it's worth it to me.  As with anything posted in public, there is always someone out there who will insult, put down, and criticize instead of attempting to understand what life is like for people like me, my mother, and the millions of other sufferers out there.  Anyone with a chronic or invisible chronic illness already knows that people like that exist and there isn't anything that can be done about it, but these illnesses are one thing we would never wish on anyone.  Well, maybe for a week so they know what it's like, but not to have to live every day the way we do.  But regardless of what the disease is, or how bad it is, there are millions of other people going through the same thing.  And no matter how much life changes with such illnesses and there is much we can no longer do, it's all about learning to accept the situation and learn what we not only can still do, but it becomes an opportunity to learn to do things or become interested in things that before we got sick, we never would have known.