HeartStrung

In my former life, I was never a big medication taker. I was reluctant to even take an over-the-counter painkiller for a headache because I felt like the painkillers were just masking the pain and if I had a headache, I preferred to know about it. So unless something truly severe was going on, I preferred to just feel it and deal with it, knowing it would eventually go away. I may not be a pill popper under normal circumstances but chronic illness is not a normal circumstance. It's a different story when the offending feelings are a daily thing. Daily symptoms get old fast. The pain feels worse, not necessarily because it is off the pain chart but because it just keeps going. There is no end in sight. I've tried a number of medications over the past 5 years and none of them made me feel any better but most of them did plenty by the way of side effects. Mr Amazing lovingly refers to me as side-effect girl . I don't usually get the really bad side effects of a medicati

What does chronic illness look like?  Does it have a face?  Does it have a sound? Do you think you can tell from a person's appearance whether or not they are sick? Do you think you can tell from the sound of their voice? Our society has so many assumptions about what it means to be sick. There are friends who will call on the phone and at the sound of my chipper voice will be convinced that I'm well. There are acquaintances who hear of my illness journey and confidently exclaim that I don't look sick so I must not be. There are doctors who say I must not be all that unwell because I'm sitting in front of them smiling and laughing. These assumptions hurt. They hurt me deeply and profoundly. They lack elements of compassion and understanding. They tend to make me feel misunderstood at best, not believed at worst.  Often, I sound chipper on the phone because I'm happy to be hearing from the person who called. Hearing from someone I love, who wants to