National Chronic Illness Awareness Week
Sep. 16th, 2009 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
technocracygirlAccording to seanan_mcguire, (who is fabulous, and you should all go and buy a copy of Rosemary and Rue [but more about that later]) it is National Chronic Illness Awareness week. So what does that mean? On the one hand, more words from people on your friendslist about causes and awareness and stuff.
On the other hand, it's about knowing what a health care plan can give you, and what will happen if you don't have one, and about your body attacking itself, and there's not much you can do about it.
I was having some digestive issues in June of last year. My primary care physician sent me to a gastroenterologist, and the *day* I got to the GI's office, they symptoms stopped. We talked, I sent in samples, they came back negative and life went on.
Then, near the end of the year, the symptoms came back, and they were much, much worse. The worst part was that I was nudgy about walking more than a few blocks without a restroom somewhere in the vicinity. Living in Berkeley and looking clean and presentable, this was not as much of a problem as it could have been. But it was a major problem. Eventually, I went to my primary care physician, who then sent me to the GI doc I'd seen before. She laid it out for me; this was the second time I'd been in her office in less than a year, and that meant a number of things, none of them fantastic, and some of them lethal.
With literally three weeks before I started a new job and one week before I embarked on a multi-state move, I got to go in for a colonoscopy. Not my idea of fun, let me tell you.
I got the news up in Washington, maybe a day after we moved into the apartment. I have Crohn's disease, who you can read all about in that handy-dandy little link over there.
I will be on medication, probably for the vast majority of the rest of my life. I need to study what I eat, so I can tell what's a trigger for me. (Right now, the big one seems to be capcasin in red pepper amounts or higher. If you wondered why I suddenly went from 4-5 stars to 1-2.) I get to go see doctors, and have them poke and prod in uncomfortable areas. I get to pay attention to stuff most people don't, because those are signs. (Not symptoms, because my basic epi texts teach me that laypeople see signs, and medical professionals note symptoms.) I need to take a multi-vitamin, because I don't know what nutrition my body absorbs from the food I eat. (If I'm flaring, not much.)
Most specific to my life right now is that I can't even try to get pregnant. Asocol can be taken while pregnant, but they don't want you to be taking it regularly. So I need to be in remission. Which I don't think I am, at the moment. (On the day of Erev Rosh Hashanah, I have an appointment with my GI to talk about this. Good thoughts for the New Year, please!)
Basically, I've spent a good chunk of my life trying to be a good, middle-class parental type, with a stable home and a stable job. I waited to have kids until I felt I could afford them, but I wanted them while I was still young-ish.
And now, because my immune system has decided that it will attack my gut, all of my vague planning is up in flames. I know, I know, "best laid plans of mice and men" and all that, but it doesn't actually help. It just really, really freaking hurts. And I don't think that I'll be talking more about that right now.
You can't tell that I'm sick. Unless I'm flaring, there's nothing more than the pills before every meal and the (what seem to be to be) more-frequent-than-might-be-usual trips to the bathroom. But I am. I can control the symptoms to an extent, but there is no cure. I will deal with this for the rest of my life. I really can't (even if I wanted to) leave to start my own business or similar. Being without some sort of health care plan means that eventually, my body would start to eat itself up, and it wouldn't be pretty along the way.
I have more to say on the more political aspects, but I'm not sure now is right for that.
Really, what I want to say is that a lot of chronic illnesses may be invisible, but that doesn't mean that they aren't out there. And, at least for mine, there was no warning, there was no sin, there was no being-a-bad-person. It just happened, and now I have to deal with it.
seanan_mcguire, (who is fabulous, and you should all go and buy a copy of Rosemary and Rue [but more about that later]) it is National Chronic Illness Awareness week. So what does that mean? On the one hand, more words from people on your friendslist about causes and awareness and stuff.On the other hand, it's about knowing what a health care plan can give you, and what will happen if you don't have one, and about your body attacking itself, and there's not much you can do about it.
I was having some digestive issues in June of last year. My primary care physician sent me to a gastroenterologist, and the *day* I got to the GI's office, they symptoms stopped. We talked, I sent in samples, they came back negative and life went on.
Then, near the end of the year, the symptoms came back, and they were much, much worse. The worst part was that I was nudgy about walking more than a few blocks without a restroom somewhere in the vicinity. Living in Berkeley and looking clean and presentable, this was not as much of a problem as it could have been. But it was a major problem. Eventually, I went to my primary care physician, who then sent me to the GI doc I'd seen before. She laid it out for me; this was the second time I'd been in her office in less than a year, and that meant a number of things, none of them fantastic, and some of them lethal.
With literally three weeks before I started a new job and one week before I embarked on a multi-state move, I got to go in for a colonoscopy. Not my idea of fun, let me tell you.
I got the news up in Washington, maybe a day after we moved into the apartment. I have Crohn's disease, who you can read all about in that handy-dandy little link over there.
I will be on medication, probably for the vast majority of the rest of my life. I need to study what I eat, so I can tell what's a trigger for me. (Right now, the big one seems to be capcasin in red pepper amounts or higher. If you wondered why I suddenly went from 4-5 stars to 1-2.) I get to go see doctors, and have them poke and prod in uncomfortable areas. I get to pay attention to stuff most people don't, because those are signs. (Not symptoms, because my basic epi texts teach me that laypeople see signs, and medical professionals note symptoms.) I need to take a multi-vitamin, because I don't know what nutrition my body absorbs from the food I eat. (If I'm flaring, not much.)
Most specific to my life right now is that I can't even try to get pregnant. Asocol can be taken while pregnant, but they don't want you to be taking it regularly. So I need to be in remission. Which I don't think I am, at the moment. (On the day of Erev Rosh Hashanah, I have an appointment with my GI to talk about this. Good thoughts for the New Year, please!)
Basically, I've spent a good chunk of my life trying to be a good, middle-class parental type, with a stable home and a stable job. I waited to have kids until I felt I could afford them, but I wanted them while I was still young-ish.
And now, because my immune system has decided that it will attack my gut, all of my vague planning is up in flames. I know, I know, "best laid plans of mice and men" and all that, but it doesn't actually help. It just really, really freaking hurts. And I don't think that I'll be talking more about that right now.
You can't tell that I'm sick. Unless I'm flaring, there's nothing more than the pills before every meal and the (what seem to be to be) more-frequent-than-might-be-usual trips to the bathroom. But I am. I can control the symptoms to an extent, but there is no cure. I will deal with this for the rest of my life. I really can't (even if I wanted to) leave to start my own business or similar. Being without some sort of health care plan means that eventually, my body would start to eat itself up, and it wouldn't be pretty along the way.
I have more to say on the more political aspects, but I'm not sure now is right for that.
Really, what I want to say is that a lot of chronic illnesses may be invisible, but that doesn't mean that they aren't out there. And, at least for mine, there was no warning, there was no sin, there was no being-a-bad-person. It just happened, and now I have to deal with it.
