Please Stop Comparing Your Cold/Flu to My Chronic Illness
Living with an illness is hard enough on its own; you comparing your symptoms to mine doesn’t help.
When you have a cold and get tired, you may take a nap. If that works for you, that’s awesome. But when I’m fatigued taking a nap doesn’t help. So please stop telling me, “Take a nap, you’ll feel better.”
When you have sore muscles from the flu, Tylenol may help you. If it does, that’s awesome. But when my muscles hurt taking Tylenol doesn’t work. So please stop telling me, “Take Tylenol, it’ll help.”
When you compare our symptoms it makes healing that much harder for me. It makes me feel like nothing I try is good enough. What works for you doesn’t work for me. It’s not as easy for me to cure a headache or to relieve my chronic fatigue. It makes me feel like my symptoms don’t exist when I can’t cure them. Your comparisons don’t help; they hurt.
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Thinkstock photo via ARTQU.
I have been recently diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome and because of its rarity im trying to teach others about it and it's severity.
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