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The Unseen Battle of Living with Chronic Illness
Stronger Than They Knew
The first time Diana felt something was wrong, she was twenty-six. It was late, nearly midnight, and her daughter, barely two years old, had finally drifted off to sleep. Diana sat at the kitchen table, staring at the stack of overdue bills, her arms heavy, her legs weak, her eyelids drooping as if she had run a marathon. She had always been the lively one—the one who could outlast any party, laugh the loudest, and take care of everyone. But now, exhaustion clung to her like a second skin, a weight that never lifted no matter how much she rested.
She had no choice but to push through. There was no one to help her. No safety net. Just her, a tiny apartment, and the daughter she loved more than anything. Her brothers and sisters had their own lives, and she had spent years helping them when she could—hosting family dinners, making sure holidays were special after their father passed. But no one noticed when she began struggling. No one saw how hard it had become just to keep moving.
At work, she was a ghost of the woman she once was. She made mistakes, dropped things, felt her body betray her in small ways that no one else seemed to see. The doctors dismissed her, one after another. Anxiety. Depression. Stress. As if a label could erase the fact that she could barely lift her arms some days.
"You're just tired," one doctor had said with a dismissive shrug. "You work too hard. Try antidepressants."
But Diana knew. She knew something inside her was wrong.
And so she fought. She fought through years of skepticism, through the dismissive glances, the subtle accusations that she was imagining it all. She fought for her daughter, for their survival.
Spring 2022.
It had taken thirty-one years to get an answer. Myasthenia Gravis. The name sounded foreign on her tongue, and yet, it explained everything. The weakness. The fatigue. The strange, unpredictable flares that made her body feel like it didn’t belong to her. She had spent years carrying a burden that no one else could see, and finally, it had a name.
But even with a diagnosis, the fight wasn’t over.
She had to fight insurance companies that denied her treatment. Fight for a doctor who would actually listen and not dismiss her symptoms. It wasn’t until February 2023 that she finally received treatment. And even then, her body betrayed her. Flares came unpredictably—sometimes during meetings at work, sometimes in the middle of a grocery store, sometimes while she sat alone in her quiet home, too weak to lift a fork to her mouth.
And her family? They faded away, quietly.
Not with harsh words or outright rejection, but with silence. They simply never thought they had to help her—after all, they never had before. Diana had always been the strong one, the capable one. The one who made things happen. It never occurred to them that she might need something in return.
She felt their disappointment in the unspoken words, in the way invitations stopped coming, in the way their messages became less frequent. No one said it outright, but she could feel it lingering in the air, in the hesitations, in the quiet shift of conversations.
Now, holidays were different. It was just her daughter, now grown, and her son-in-law. It was quieter, simpler. But it was filled with love. They understood. They saw her.
She still worked. Her job made accommodations, and she was grateful. But every day, she wondered about the future. Would she be able to keep working? Would she lose more independence? Would the world shrink even further?
Still, Diana had hope.
She dreamed of hiking again. Of throwing parties, of laughing without worry, of meeting people without fearing what her body might do. She held onto those dreams, even as reality weighed heavy on her shoulders.
Life had taken care of her before. It would continue to.
And so, she carried on.
Stronger than they ever knew.#MyastheniaGravis
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