autoimmunediseasewarrior

Today I need to work on changing my negative thought patterns! Stress is a killer in general for my diseases!!! 🙌

It’s hard to accept that your health is deteriorating but it’s easy to put it to the back of your mind when the problem isn’t there constantly. For years, I pushed through and didn’t really listen to my body. Foolish I know, but it’s easily done right?!

In the more recent years, things started changing .. I could feel my body slowly giving up on me and suddenly I couldn’t just “push through” any more. I reluctantly had to start relying on walking aids and a wheelchair when things were really bad. After 7 months of vomiting several times a day and losing A lot of Weight, I was given an NJ tube to give me the nutrients that my body needed. My seizures started getting more severe and frequent and my body was covered in lesions.

I was used to being active, travelling, working, not having a care in the world and gradually I could feel that slipping away. I went from this totally independent woman who had a lovely married life in a lovely house, to being divorced, relying on family to help me do basic tasks. I lost the life I knew because of the illness and that really dug deep with me! I resented the illness so badly!!

I had to take a long look at myself and figure out what fork in the road I would take .. do I hold my head high, accept that this is what I’ve been given and keep fighting .. or do I give up? I stared at myself in the mirror looking at this unrecognisable person .. thin, pale, fragile, with a tube attached to my face and then something clicked. That’s not who I am .. why should I let this illness define me??

I obviously didn’t miraculously change or become super confident over night, (I wouldn’t say I’m super confident now and I still suffer with anxiety) I just made small changes and choices. I stopped hiding, I posted more on social media and I tried to find the person behind the illness again. I finally got to the point where I was starting to feel comfortable in my skin again when I got told i was having my NJ tube removed and having it replaced with a pegJ. I actually finally started accepting and embracing the tube on my face and then I find out it was going - it’s like in one of those movies where the character has to learn a lesson before the curse is lifted.

Any way I guess the point I’m making is it’s hard to accept change, but that change is going to happen any way so embrace it and don’t let the illness win. (Easier said than done I know, but coming from a pretty dark place .. I know it is possible, even if it’s just a little bit.) #Disability #ChronicIllness #AutoimmuneDisease #autoimmunediseasewarrior #BehcetsDisease