Working With Chronic Illness

In the early years of  living with auto immune diseases,  I  felt completely out of step with people my age.  I had more in common with my grandparents and their friends than other 20 and 30 somethings.

At 29 and married one month,  I was bedridden and lost vision in one eye (multiple sclerosis).  That was our first year of married life. Over the years, my kids' activities and physical work required left me in a puddle.

The following decades,  I worried on a daily basis about how symptoms would affect me and left more than one good job because I couldn't keep up.

Being young and unwell too often leaves you feeling hopeless because you haven't had the chance to see what you can do in this life but here's my take on what to do.

Do you find yourself stuck doing the same thing over and over?   Do you get stuck on replaying that negative conversation or running through what's wrong in your life,  but nothing changes?

If there were a blues song about living with chronic bad health, I bet most people wouldn't sing about 'love gone bad'.   No doubt, holding onto relationships is hard with chronically bad health.  I've worked with people who blame illness for failed relationships and there's much to be said about that.

But from what I've seen, we cry most frequently about whether to participate or not.   "To be or not to be?" wondered Hamlet.   He knew that choosing between two bad choices wears a person down.