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I Don't Know How to Accept My Illness

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Over two years ago I woke up from a nap with a fever of 104 degrees and severe pain. The fever went away, but I never really recovered.

Since that fateful day I’ve been diagnosed, misdiagnosed, and called a faker, but one stage I haven’t been through is acceptance.

I don’t know a lot about what my future will hold with my illnesses. I could get better, I could get worse, I could stay the same. So far each new year comes with new diagnoses.

If you ask me what my future with chronic and rare diseases looks like I will say that I will be living in a world where I feel almost fine but will retain the wisdom that being sick has given me.

Here’s the flaw in my dream:

I will likely have many “side effects” of my illnesses that will affect the rest of my life. And some of the things that my test results have shown may cause me to need treatments for the rest of my life.

Every single day I hope that maybe today or tomorrow I’ll wake up and my joints won’t hurt and I won’t be fatigued and I won’t have to isolate myself due to my practically non-existent immune system…

I hope so badly I’ll look online and there will be a headline that they’ve found a cure…

I also (quietly) hope one day I will wake up with acceptance for my illness, to possibly stop grieving the person I could be… the person I feel I should be.

I don’t know how to accept my illness and my pain, but I do know that every day I will fight this with all I have.

To quote John Green, “I’ve figured something out. The future is unpredictable.”

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Thinkstock image by zatelepina

Originally published: December 16, 2016
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