Living Well with Multiple Chronic Illnesses

Living with a chronic illness is difficult. Living with more than one can seem to devastate your life, but it doesn't have to. I personally have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, Tachycardia, High Blood Pressure and Insulin Resistance. I am also at high risk for Diabetes. Despite all of this, I am determined to live my life to the fullest. I have dreams and goals that I refuse to give up on. I am learning to live life one day at a time to the best of my ability. This is not a simple task, but I would like to share with others struggling through the daily effects of chronic illnesses, what I have learned and what helps me to keep going. I don't believe we should have to just learn to live with chronic illnesses, but that we should be empowered to live well with them.

One of the first things I do when I am diagnosed with a chronic illness, is to become educated about it. It's overwhelming to find out you have a life-long illness and I want to know what it is, what to expect, and how to best take care of it. I have learned from experience that doctors don't really fill you in about the illnesses. They diagnose you and treat you, but rarely go into detail about the illness itself. So I surf the net and get books from the library. The information you find can be a lot to take in, but I usually find it empowering and encouraging to be armed with the information needed to know how to deal with what I have.

Forums and message boards are some of my favorite places to find information and personal experience of people who have a particular illness. It's comforting to know you're not alone in a chronic illness and encouraging to read what has worked for others. I have come across so much helpful information about symptoms, treatments, medications, tests and more just by reading through the posts. Then if I want to know something specific, I can post a question and get answers. This has been so beneficial to me that I often return to forums and message boards.

It is very important to listen to your body and figure out what makes you feel better and what makes you feel worse. Many things can affect how you feel. What you eat or drink, a new medication you start, stress, your schedule, and lack of sleep are common culprits in making you feel worse.

When you feel worse, think about what you recently ate or drank. You may find you need to eliminate some things. I personally have found that I can't eat a lot of sugar, especially at breakfast time. It makes me weak, tired, irritable, and shaky a couple of hours later. I also can't drink caffeine because it raises my blood pressure and heart rate, which makes me feel terrible. If you think something you are eating or drinking makes you feel worse, remove it from your diet for a while and see if it helps you feel better.

When you start a new medication, pay close attention to how your body responds to it. I have personal experience with two medications that made me much worse. One affected me the very first time I took it and came close to sending me to the emergency room. The other was over several months that I grew increasingly worse and finally realized it was the medicine and not my illness. Once I stopped the medications that were making me worse, my health was greatly improved within a couple of days. I am also on a few medications that I can clearly see the benefits of. Every person is unique and so is how our bodies respond to medications. Just because a medication is supposed to help, doesn't always mean it will.

It's common knowledge that stress affects our health, but when you have chronic illnesses, stress can greatly affect your health. Our bodies just can't seem to handle the added effort coping with stress takes. I have actually had times when I've had a disagreement with someone that upset me and felt physically terrible within a short time after getting upset. I've even noticed that the more intense the stress, the worse it can make me feel. Now, I know we live in a real world where stress is inevitable, but as much as you possibly can, avoid it like the plague.

Your schedule can also affect how you feel. If your schedule is erratic, your medication schedule is also most likely erratic. It is best to stick to a schedule that's roughly the same throughout the week, with some leeway on the weekends. Having an erratic schedule and/or taking your medications on an erratic schedule can make you tired and weak or prevent you from getting the full benefits of your medicine. I personally love to stay up late, but have found it's not the best thing for my health. I do better if I go to bed by 11:00 during the week and no later than midnight on the weekends. If I stay up too late, it seems to throw everything off in my body, causing me to not be able to get up at a decent time in the morning. I have also found that the later I take my medications in the morning, the worse I feel in the morning.

Lack of sleep can be extremely detrimental to your physical well-being when you have chronic illnesses. Before getting sick, I used to function well on 6 to 7 hours of sleep. Now I can rarely function on less than 8, often need 81/2 to 9 and have times when I'll sleep 10 hours. It's usually pretty easy to tell that your body needs more sleep and getting enough sleep is extremely beneficial when your body is fighting to function. Having a good schedule will help to make sure you get enough sleep.

Remember that you will have good days and bad days. Depending on what illnesses you have, there may be extremes in how you feel on a good day compared to a bad day. Mine vary greatly. I can feel so good that I can go to the trails and bike 5 to 6 miles or I can feel so terrible, that I can barely function and need to lie down and sleep in the middle of the day. When I have good days, I take advantage of them. That's when I go places with my daughter and do things that we enjoy that I'm not able to do at other times. It's also when I tackle projects that have been waiting to get done that require physical work. Like anyone else, I struggle with having bad days, especially when I have several or many in a row. I've learned that sometimes I can't do anything about how I feel and have to accept being limited in what I can do, for the time being. I also know though, that better days will come again and that helps me make it through the bad ones. You can only do your best every day to accomplish what you can, when you can.

Take time to enjoy life. It sometimes seems impossible to enjoy life when you're dealing with not feeling well on a daily basis, but it's extremely important. Find things you enjoy, even little things and make them a part of your daily life. I happen to love plants and flowers, so my living room and bedroom are full of them. I enjoy seeing them every day and they're something I enjoy taking care of. I also have a twelve-year old daughter that I spend time with. I may not feel well enough to do anything other than cuddle with her and watch a movie, but I enjoy being with her and of course, she needs the "mom time". We also spend time playing cards or games together, which doesn't require much from me physically. I am also a firm believer in laughter truly being good medicine. Not feeling well can make you too serious and sometimes you just need to lighten up a bit. I personally have daily comics that I read on my computer and I receive an email each day of animal pictures with funny captions. It feels good to just laugh for a little while and not be weighed down by the struggles of life.

Find time to do things for others. It's easy to become self-absorbed when dealing with chronic illnesses, thinking only about how you feel and how to make it better. Unfortunately, this can also make you miserable. Who wants to think about how they feel all of the time? It's very beneficial to your emotional well-being, not to mention helpful to someone else, if you find time to do things for others. Even if you are not physically able to do much, you can still do things for others. Do you know others that are sick? You could send them a nice email or e-card to encourage them. Do you like to sew, knit or crochet? You could work on making something for someone. Have you had encouraging things happen that are helping you in your illness? Share them on forums and message boards to encourage others that are struggling with the same thing. Do you have good days that you would physically be able to do things for others? Do it. It can be anything. Volunteer at an animal shelter, help an elderly person with housework or yard work, help someone else who is sick, take little gifts to a nursing home to bless the residents, help out a friend or family member with something you know would be a blessing to them, etc. Find anything you can do to help someone else and it will get your mind off of what you are going through.

Get it out. You may have times when you are full of anger and frustration, times when life hurts so much or even times you may feel depressed. You may feel like it's consuming you or that you just might explode if you don't get it out somehow and that's exactly what you should do. This
can be done in many different ways, depending on what works for you. For a lot of chronic illnesses, there are support groups online where you can talk to others and find encouragement. You may have a close friend or family member that understands and will listen as you pour your heart out. Some people like to keep a journal to vent in and also find it encouraging to be able to go back to read things later in order to see how far they have come since they wrote a particular entry. For me, I like to write poetry and publish it online. Writing the poem gets my frustrations out of me and knowing that others read it is like someone listened to what I said and shared in it with me. Finding what works for you so you can get things out when needed is what's important.

Be patient. We would all like to feel completely better, right now, but that just isn't reality most of the time. Finding a doctor that can help you can take time. I have been sick for over 3 ½ years and it's only been in the last 1 ½ years that I've had doctors that have truly been able to help me. Then, the right medications have to be found that will work for you. After you find a medication that helps, it usually takes time for the full benefits to come into effect. I'm currently on a medication that I can tell is starting to help, but it takes at least 6 months for the full benefits to be in effect and I've only been on it for 2 ½ months. Once you find a doctor that can help, are on the right medications, a good diet, and a good schedule, it takes time for your body to heal. Stick with things that are helping and give it some time for things to get better. Our bodies have an amazing ability to heal and though we may never regain perfect health, we can find things that will help us feel and live better with some time and patience.

Be thankful. Find reasons to be thankful in the midst of living with chronic illnesses. It can be all too easy to focus on the negative when you are sick. I have learned to be thankful for the things that have come to pass instead of constantly dwelling on how I would like things to be. I have been thankful every time I have been diagnosed with something, because I finally knew what was wrong and could put a name on it. Each problem that has been figured out has been like finally solving a mystery. I felt like I could finally move forward into getting some care for my health problems. I am also very thankful for any doctors I have had that have been knowledgeable enough or determined enough to figure out what was wrong with me. I am thankful for the medications that are helping and thankful to be off the ones that were making me worse. I am thankful for feeling so much better than I did a year ago and even somewhat better than I did a couple of months ago. I am thankful for the 20lbs I've lost of the 70 I gained when I was extremely sick. Finding reasons to be thankful gives me strength because it's encouraging and empowering to focus on what is good. Look at your life and find all the reasons you can to be thankful. Literally make a list of them and refer back to it when you need a reminder of the good things that have happened.

Never give up. No one should have to give up on their life or feel like their life has been taken from them just because they are sick. My hope is that by putting the things I have written about into practice, you will find encouragement, strength, and empowerment to live well with chronic illnesses and not just live with them. Remember that you are not alone in this struggle with sickness and never give up.