Best 129 quotes in «chronic illness quotes» category

It never occurred to me that somehow women did know about it. It just never occurred to me. Yes I am wearing sneakers too. You are in a suit, I am comfortable. So when she explained to me that this was the first event really of its kind, it floored me. So I called my daughter who is in her 30s now and I said “do you know what endometriosis is?” She said, “what? Have to pack the pack the busters.” I said “no man, you have never heard of it?” No she said. I do not know what it is, and it occurred to me that my 30-year-old daughter who I told about endometriosis and it didn’t stick. If she didn’t know, and she is one of the hippest people I know, and her daughter doesn’t know, she has 19-year-old and she is a 13-year-old. The boy, we don’t care much about if he knows about it so much. There is other stuff for him to learn. Like how to roll a condom, things like that. You know, and it occurred to me that if they didn’t know that there were hundreds of thousands girls out there that don’t know. It is not because their mothers don’t want to tell them, because it’s not religion, it’s pure ignorance. We don’t know, we don’t have the information, we have it now, and so now is why this very first gathering is happening. Now is why we’re all sitting here looking really fabulous as you are... [Whoopi Goldberg on endometriosis awareness from the 2009 Blossom Ball]

I want you to love me for me, for now, for as much time as we have. I swear I'll do all I can to take care of myself. I already do. But that's it. If that's enough, I'm yours. If you can only love me if you have a guarantee that I'll be around forever, then find someone else to be terrified of losing and let me go.

It's not easy to diagnose because depending where the endometrial deposits are, the symptoms can be quite different. It's an unrecognized problem among teenage girls, and it's something that every young woman who has painful menstruation should be aware of ... it's a condition that is curable if it's caught early. If not, if it's allowed to run on, it can cause infertility, and it can really mess up your life. [Author Hilary Mantel on being asked about being a writer with endometriosis, Nov 2012 NPR interview]

I wondered if there was anything [the doctor] could do to to make the pain disappear and my arms work again. I wondered if I was going to get any worse than I already was. If so, I wondered if he could fix that, too.

Listen, I wanted to say, I don't need your judgment, okay? I have enough to deal with without you contributing, so can we just get on with this so I can get out of here? But I couldn't form the words. Dr. Johnson viewed me as a child, and somehow, under his contemptuous gaze, I had regressed to one. I was frightened and shy, and it was all I could do to answer his questions and count the seconds until the end of the visit.

Many empaths are diagnosed with chronic illnesses such as fibromyalgia, CFS, lupus, and various autoimmune diseases, as well as psychological disorders such as agoraphobia, social anxiety, ADHD, depression, sensory processing disorder, among many others.

ME’ as a medical entity was later supplanted in the 1980s by psychiatrists such as Simon Wessely, replaced by the label ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’; a fatiguing syndrome of unknown origin that exists, in part, as a result of dysfunctional illness beliefs, as well as social trends and social care systems that reward illness seeking behaviours.

ME/CFS has a greater negative impact on functional status and well-being than other chronic diseases, e.g., cancer or lung diseases[8], and is associated with a drastic decrement in physical functioning[9]. In a comparison study[10] ME/CFS patients scored significantly lower than patients with hypertension, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, and multiple sclerosis (MS), on all of the eight Short Form Health Survey (SF-36)[11] subscales. As compared to patients with depression, ME/CFS patients scored significantly lower on all the scales, except for scales measuring mental health and role disability due to emotional problems, on which they scored significantly higher.

I will be living with chronic pain for the rest of my life. I don’t have the mobility, energy or life options I used to have. I work hard to manage the pain, and I want the medical system to be a respectful and effective partner, not a jailer. The opioid crisis is not my doing.

Most people live in fear of some terrible event changing their lives, the death of a loved one or a serious illness. For the chronically ill, this terrible event has already happened, and we have been let in on an amazing secret: You survive. You adapt, and your life changes, but in the end you go on, with whatever compromises you have been forced to make, whatever losses you have been forced to endure. You learn to balance your fears with the simple truth that you must go on living.

My alarm goes off at 5:50 a.m. First thing I do is check to make sure I'm not dead. If I am, in fact, still alive, I usually sob uncontrollably until there's nothing left in my tear ducts but salt dust, then grope blindly through my apartment to the bathroom, where I say a little prayer for a hole to open beneath my building and swallow us all.

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a disabling condition characterized by severe unexplained fatigue and a mixed profile of symptoms such as sore throat, painful/swollen lymph nodes, muscle pain, joint pain, headaches, unrefreshing sleep, post-exertional malaise and cognitive difficulties (K. Fukuda et al., 1994).

My love has saved me. It wraps strong arms around me when I cry with despair;it gives me the routine of a working week to lend vicarious structure to my shapeless days. It brings me daily laughter, a reason to keep washing...and it slices me open with guilt.

My lip trembled, my throat raw, and I started to cry. But not because I didn’t look perfect. But because I looked healthy and because I wasn’t sure how long I’d stay that way.

My name is CRPS, or so they say But I actually go by; a few different names. I was once called causalgia, nearly 150 years ago And then I had a new name It was RSD, apparently so. I went by that name because the burn lived inside of me. Now I am called CRPS, because I have so much to say I struggle to be free. I don't have one symptom and this is where I change, I attack the home of where I live; with shooting/burning pains. Depression fills the mind of the body I belong, it starts to speak harsh to self, negativity growing strong. Then I start to annoy them; with the issues with sensitivity, You'd think the pain enough; but no, it wants to make you aware of its trembling disability. I silently make my move; but the screams are loud and clear, Because I enter your physical reality and you can't disappear. I confuse your thoughts; I contain apart of your memory, I cover your perspective, the fog makes it sometimes unbearable to see. I play with your temperature levels, I make you nervous all the time - I take away your independance and take away your pride. I stay with you by the day & I remind you by the night, I am an awful journey and you will struggle with this fight. Then there's a side to me; not many understand, I have the ability to heal and you can be my friend. Help yourself find the strength to fight me with all you have, because eventually I'll get tired of making you grow mad. It will take some time; remember I mainly live inside your brain, Curing me is hard work but I promise you, You can beat me if you feed love to my pain. Find the strength to carry on and feed the fears with light; hold on to the seat because, like I said, it's going to be a fight. But I hope to meet you, when your healthy and healed, & you will silenty say to me - I did this, I am cured is this real? That day could possibly come; closer than I want- After all I am a disease and im fighting for my spot. I won't deny from my medical angle, I am close to losing the " incurable " battle.

I wanted to relay a first hand experience to an audience possibly struggling to understand just what living with an autoimmune condition means,” Connery says. “It's a difficult journey and very much misunderstood by our friends and family – I hope this book can help to change that.

No matter what stage of illness we are in, whether we’ve just been diagnosed or we have lived with chronic migraines for decades, there are adjustments we can make to increase joy in our lives and to live more fully.

Nothing worked. This blazing pain seemed only to be getting worse.

Not that he had come anywhere near attaining her skill at managing hope. She could balance it like a juggler -- let it soar and curb it and pass it from hand to hand. She could spin hope and spin herself through it. Forget mere juggling; she was a veritable trapeze artist with this hope thing.

No one knows our bodies or our subjective experiences like we do. This means we can rest secure in our knowledge of ourselves and what we’re going through, even when the medical profession doesn’t understand or believe us. Migraine is a weird and changing disease. It affects all of us differently, and every attack is a little different than the one before. This means that no one can understand your life, symptoms, or illness like you can. This can be incredibly empowering: you are the expert. But, it also carries great responsibility: to live as happily and as fully as possible, you must listen to your body and trust your instincts.

My handbag turned into a diaper bag for the chronically ill.

Pain is a portal to transformation, It does not knock politely.

Of course, it’s now obvious why he was so angry that day. People don’t move into hospice to live but to die. And that half an egg sandwich I ended up making him–that sandwich was the last meal he ate in our Haight-Ashbury apartment, our one true home.

Pain diminishes us, and it is so important to remember, in the midst of pain and everything that pain takes from you, that still ... you are enough. You are enough just as you are. You are worthy of love and kindness. You are enough. And you have enough.

Recently God asked me the same question in a new way, "And if I don't allow you to heal, if I never remove the pain, will you still trust Me?

Physically, mentally, emotionally -- it seems like every part of me is broken in one way or another.

Pushing our pain aside...diminishes our human experience.

Parents: Do you have babies and toddlers who are afflicted by terminal illness, rare and incurable diseases? When all is not well for them, read to them this beautiful, enjoyable and lively healing book breathed by the Holy Spirit of a Sovereign God for your little ones' healing: Dear Baby Be Healed From Terminal Illness: Cutting Through soul and spirit by Stellah Mupanduki ...You will forget that there is illness in your household because you will encounter the healing presence of the Holy Spirit touching you and your little one with sound healing. Smile...cheer up, all will be well for you.

Self-stigma can be just a big a problem as the negative attitudes of others.

Remember this: You are the expert of your body.

She resented her body's betrayal. She still couldn't express how insecure it made her, how she lived on a precipice. The most basic parts of her could fail, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Side note: invalid. Whoever invented that word, and made it the same word as not-valid? That person sucked.

Some of us fall through the unseen cracks in the world of health on a bright summer’s day through a run-in with machine or microbe, like Alice down the rabbit hole. Some of us were born this way. And some find out that our genes have hidden within them a ticking time bomb. Waiting. Silently. However we got here, we are now inhabitants of the state of sickness. Our papers for the world of health have been rescinded without notice. Our body-world has been colonised by patriarchs, and we, the natives, should know our place: small folded patient, compliant, silent, not defiant. They seem to believe that our bodies are just an errant version of theirs. That our souls are not woman-shaped on the inside. That it’s not our place to take our space and insist on our inner difference. Their gospel is scribbled down on prescription pads in spider scrawl. They are not to be questioned, especially not with our own heresy.

She was always fighting a battle but her smile would never tell you so.

Results about disease risk that largely agree among different studies include those for CHD [Coronary Heart Disease] and perhaps diabetes and colon cancer. In addition, data on other risk factors for chronic diseases, such as overweight, blood lipids, and blood pressure, fit this criterion. Mortality and incidence rates of coronary disease events are indeed clearly lower in vegetarians. This is true in the 2 previous cohorts of Adventists (16, 22) and in the older cohorts of British and German vegetarians (23–25). A combined analysis of those cohorts (26) confirmed this result with a 32% higher CHD mortality rate in the nonvegetarians. This is not surprising because there is convincing evidence that several important risk factors for CHD have more optimal values in vegetarians. Regular, moderate nut (16, 27) and wholegrain (11, 16) consumption are associated with lower risk of CHD. These are foods often preferred by vegetarians. Several other studies of nonvegetarians have strongly suggested that dietary patterns emphasizing fruit, vegetables, and less meat are associated with much lower risk of CHD (10, 28) consistent with the CHD mortality data in studies of vegetarians. Animal fats (largely saturated) raise LDL cholesterol (29) and increase risk; these obviously come from foods eaten less or not at all by vegetarians. Total or LDL cholesterol is typically lower in vegetarians (30, 31). HDL cholesterol is not consistently different (30, 32), although it does tend to be a little lower in Adventists (33), perhaps because of the lack of alcohol consumption. Vegetarians are consistently thinner, or at least less overweight, than are nonvegetarians within the same studies (34, 32). It is also probable that vegetarians have lower blood pressures than others (32, 35, 36), although the reasons are still controversial, and effects are sometimes small as in British vegetarians (37).

So often we think that the truth is a static entity that exists only in a singular place--a place that we have to find. But I have come to realize that the answers I have been looking for, the truth of my own body, was ever-changing.

That’s the point. This healthy-feeling time now just feels like a tease. Like I’m in this holding pattern, flying in smooth circles within sight of the airport, in super-comfortable first class. But I can’t enjoy the in-flight movie or free chocolate chip cookies because I know that before the airport is able to make room for us, the plane is going to run out of fuel, and we’re going to crash-land into a fiery, agonizing death.

Studies also show that doctors may view ME/CFS patients as hostile or combative when they challenge the incumbent biopsychosocial model of ME or CFS. Yet rather than feeling threatened or worse still, viewing the patient as uncooperative, there is an opportunity to discuss the limitations of medical knowledge. Here, we believe there is an ethical duty for candour and honesty: indeed, where there are clear gaps in medical knowledge the patient voice should have even more standing.

The biochemistry and needs of each patient is unique. Chronically ill patients require nutritional support for healing.

The disaster, as Dad and others saw it, was the emerging AIDS crisis and the cultural attacks instigated by conservative against gay men and women in the early 1980s. It was found in the cruel indifference of President Ronald Reagan, who wouldn’t publicly address the epidemic until the end of his second term, after twenty thousand Americans had died, and the hostile rhetoric of conservatives close to Reagan like Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, and Pat Buchanan, Reagan’s future speechwriter. In 1983, Buchanan wrote of AIDS, “The poor homosexuals–they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution.

That is what chronic illness is . . . a disconnect between what our souls can do and what our bodies can do.

The 40-hour work week, long considered the gold standard, has quietly and insidiously stretched into 50 to 60 hours. Despite this accepted practice, social commentators and the average person agree that functioning at such a pace can't possibly be good for one's mental or physical health. /So I ask you: if the expanded work-week isn't healthy for someone in good physical condition, how can it possibly be acceptable for someone with a chronic illness? Quite simply, it's not.

The secret of making lasting change is to acknowledge and accept that real change takes time and patience. We didn't get chronically ill overnight. We didn't gain weight in one week or even one month. Good chance, it may take us longer than twenty-one days to overcome whatever we're facing. Whether it's something physical, emotional, spiritual, or a combination, we may need to be realistic in our goals for meaningful change to happen. The first step is getting started!

There is no specific test for multiple sclerosis.  Its early symptoms - fatigue, loss of sensation, weakness and visual changes - are frequently misdiagnosed as psychoneurosis or an even more severe psychiatric disorder, such as hysteria, particularly in women. When doctors could find no organic cause for [Jacqueline Du Pré's] complaints, they prescribed a year's rest, and referred her to a psychiatrist... When she consulted a doctor in Australia about her tenacious fatigue and occasional double vision in her right eye, he dismissed her symptoms as "adolescent trauma" and suggested she take up a relaxing hobby.

The thing is, there is no certainty in this life - in one second your entire world could shift. I'm not saying it will, but I am living proof that It can. We never prepare for tragedy and that's a good thing but my god what's it's taught me is how little we appreciate what we have or some cases once had.

The strong, ferocious wind just made the chill worse, and as it blew around me, electric bursts of pain shot through my body.

The weekend was a much-needed breath of fresh air; Monday always seemed to not only take that breath right back, but add a few extra pounds to my shoulders as well.

The Sick Woman begins to see that life is wilder, more chaotic, harsher and more loving, paradoxical, and downright strange than she was ever taught. She discovers for herself the power of moon and the tides, the shifting of the stars and the seasons, the haze of pollen and shift in air pressure and how they impact her dreams, her moods, her body processes. She learns that she is not an independent automaton but a wild being woven of life and death, a chaos of magic, not a machine of logic. She learns that the outer impacts the inner in myriad ways. And vice versa. She learns that she is simultaneously weaker and yet more powerful than she ever knew. She is dangerous with this knowledge which does not appear in the medical books and bibles except as anomalies. She’s singing from the wrong hymn sheet and messing up the patina of perfection that the patriarchy is aiming for. In a display of a million marching soldiers with polished boots, gleaming medals and straight legs, there is the sick woman, bare breasted, hair loose, scars showing, shameless, dancing to her own tune.

The thought of being able to [move my arms] made me want to give up my legs [instead] since I was accustomed to using them. But, I figured that after a few hours of sitting in a wheelchair...I would switch back...in a flash.

The video was still playing, although I didn't know why. It seemed as if the able-bodied dancers were mocking me.