chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes.  Text reads: “See people on Chronic Illness Cat’s Tumblr who are physically ill.  Feel like a whiner because there’s nothing physically wrong with you.”

Um, it depends on how you define “physical”: depression and other mental illnesses are physical illnesses, since they involve the brain, which is a physical organ.

Also, I don’t see how my pain (both physical and emotional) in any way diminishs your pain. Yes, you might have problems that seem to have less of an impact on your life than those of people who have posted to this blog have on their lives, but that doesn’t mean, in absolute terms, that your problems are any less real or troublesome to you than they were before you started following this blog.

So please be kind to yourself, recognize your own pain, and remember that you have a right to your feelings and a right to express them when you feel the need. Yes, be grateful it isn’t worse, and be sensitive to others’ pain and be willing to listen to them, too. But please don’t stifle the expression of your own feelings, just because you feel that other people seem to have it worse.

If you do decide to hold back on expressing frustration about your own issues, do it because you are easily able to express gratitude for the good things in your life instead. But if things are so bad that this isn’t possible, then be kind to yourself and don’t beat yourself up with labels like “whiner” or “complainer” when you need to give voice to your own experience.

chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Text reads: “Prescribed prozac for social anxiety disorder. Can’t stand without fainting”]

SRI’s are supposed to help POTS patients but apparently not me. Now I get to choose between being too afraid to ever leave my room without having a panic attack or not feeling anxious and wanting to go out but being unable to stand.

decisions…

I’ve been on many different SSRIs over the years and some of them made my POTS worse, while others made the symptoms better. It might be a good idea to ask your doctor about trying a different SSRI, or even a SSNRI (selective serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor) or an SNDRI (selective serotonin-norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitor).

chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Text reads: (top) Sister sees Cymbalta bottle in med pile (bottom) Begins singing commercial to you.]

One day my ten year old sister saw my Cymbalta prescription and said, “oooh, you take Cymbalta?  Do you have pain?  Cymbalta can help!”

Yes, I have pain.  Cymbalta isn’t really helping, though.

I’ve never seen the commercial for Cymbalta. I take it for depression and it helps with my POTS symptoms and brain-fog, to some extent, but I don’t know if it’s all that helpful for pain. I’ve been taking gabapentin successfully for pain since 1999, and only started taking Cymbalta in 2006 for depression. It was the first anti-depressant that ever really worked for me, but that doesn’t mean it’ll work for another person. Our bodies are all so different. At least for now, it’s too complex to know who will react to what drugs in what ways. Supposedly, someday they’ll be able to predict that kind of thing and get people on the most helpful drugs for them with the least amount of side-effects, just by examining their genetic code, or some such. But that’s probably a long way off.

chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Text reads: “Facebook statuses about petty problems, I have a terminal illness”]

I just think people should appreciate what they have, instead of complaining about what they don’t. 

I have a terminal illness, but I guess I’ve come well enough to terms with it that I can deal with other people’s relatively small problems. Really, for me being terminally ill isn’t nearly so much of a problem as having a poor quality of life while I’m still alive. So on that level, I can relate to smaller problems in other people’s lives since those impact their quality of life, too, even if they aren’t dying. Also, I’d just as soon not get a gold medal in the suffering olympics.

chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Top text reads: “compulsively picks at eczema…eczema gets worse” Bottom text reads: “eczema gets worse…further fuels compulsive skin picking”]

Yeah, dermatillomania + eczema = a perpetual cycle of frustration. :(

chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Top text reads: “But it’s the 25th of December, can’t you just—” Bottom text a in large bold font reads: “NO.”]

chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Text reads: ” ‘Your prescription won’t be available until next week, due to the holidays.’ Guess I’ll just put my illness on hold until the next business day.”]

Merry Christmas indeed. Oh well, who needs a working digestive system, anyway?

This ^ It’s not like there aren’t plenty of Muslims, Pagans, Jews and others that don’t celebrate Christmas and who’d love the overtime pay, who could work Christmas.

chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Text reads: Accessorizing? Medalert bracelet. ]

Oh, G-d, I’ve been meaning to get one of these for *years*. But life just keeps getting in the way. Also, I hate wearing bracelets since they catch on my arm hair and abrade my skin and *ouch*!

chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Text reads: “Stand, faint”]

For all the POTSies

This ^ I hate it. :(

chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Text reads: “If I had to chose between food and meds. I’d chose meds. Without hesitation”]

Wow, I’d at least need some rice so I could get the meds to go all the way down to my tummy, rather than hang out in my throat just below my larynx for hours and hours not doing me any good.

chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Text reads: “Wow, you’re very good at describing your symptoms.” - Must be the years of practice.]

Thank you for the compliment, Doctor #3923749. It’s an acquired skill.

Lol, this! :D

chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Text reads: Top: “I know how you feel!” Bottom: “I sincerely doubt that.”]

I can’t handle people saying this to me anymore. No, you don’t know how I feel. You may know how you’d feel in the same situation, but you have absolutely ZERO idea how I feel.

This ^

(Though I’m probably guilty of having slipped and said that to other people in the past, I hope not to repeat that mistake.)

chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Text reads: “eczema/afraid of using every cream, lotion, and facewash ever.”]

This. ^

However, over the years, I have found things that work well for me, but unfortunately, they don’t work well for everyone. :(

chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Text reads: Top:“’You’re so skinny!’” Bottom: “I’ll gladly give you my chronic pain that destroys my appetite.”]

Omg, this!

chronicillnesscat:

I’m a young woman who sometimes walks with a cane, and I get this from well-meaning strangers.  I never know how to respond.