Why talking to temporarily ill people helped me.
Sometimes when chronic illness gets the best of me I get a little critical of what I do with my time even though I really don't have much free time anyways due to illness.
I know recovering from attacks and activities is what I should be doing but in the back of my head
occasionally I feel guilt. Now I know I write about things along the lines of guilt-free spoonie living and it could come off like this sensation for me is completely gone, but I'm not perfect. It visits me occasionally but not often like it used to.
Whenever I do have these moments of guilt or anything similar I think about how abled people are when they get sick, they do similar things to what I do every day. They feel awful then cover themselves up in sheets turn on the movies and recover,recover, recover. Some of them may even push themselves to do something they really shouldn't be doing. They might spend the whole day/week in bed, they probably require more help than they did before whatever struck them. They usually don't go to school or work either, their outside-of-the-house life is also compromised.... Sure that one-two week experience doesn't really have an emotional,physical or life impact on them but the thing is that seeing and talking to healthy people with temporary illness kind of reminds you that "This is kind of what illness does to people, chronic or temporary"
I always kind of put things in a Us/Them category because my life compared to my abled friends/family is so contrastingly different.... how could I not?
Today I had a bad day, spent most of it in bed and my sister had just gotten a cold the other day.
I felt a littler better towards the end of the day and I called her to see how she was doing.
She didn't go to work. she stayed in bed the majority of the day watching movies and she also had the "sick voice" congested, and very nasal. My "sick voice" is different of course, it sounds kind of like I'm just feathering off or like a winded sloth. But anyways we did pretty much the same thing, and even though her illness will clear up in a week or so and mine never will, suddenly I didn't feel so different.
I know recovering from attacks and activities is what I should be doing but in the back of my head
occasionally I feel guilt. Now I know I write about things along the lines of guilt-free spoonie living and it could come off like this sensation for me is completely gone, but I'm not perfect. It visits me occasionally but not often like it used to.
Whenever I do have these moments of guilt or anything similar I think about how abled people are when they get sick, they do similar things to what I do every day. They feel awful then cover themselves up in sheets turn on the movies and recover,recover, recover. Some of them may even push themselves to do something they really shouldn't be doing. They might spend the whole day/week in bed, they probably require more help than they did before whatever struck them. They usually don't go to school or work either, their outside-of-the-house life is also compromised.... Sure that one-two week experience doesn't really have an emotional,physical or life impact on them but the thing is that seeing and talking to healthy people with temporary illness kind of reminds you that "This is kind of what illness does to people, chronic or temporary"
I always kind of put things in a Us/Them category because my life compared to my abled friends/family is so contrastingly different.... how could I not?
Today I had a bad day, spent most of it in bed and my sister had just gotten a cold the other day.
I felt a littler better towards the end of the day and I called her to see how she was doing.
She didn't go to work. she stayed in bed the majority of the day watching movies and she also had the "sick voice" congested, and very nasal. My "sick voice" is different of course, it sounds kind of like I'm just feathering off or like a winded sloth. But anyways we did pretty much the same thing, and even though her illness will clear up in a week or so and mine never will, suddenly I didn't feel so different.
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