This article isn't just to my fellow Cystic Fibrosis people, it's to anyone with a chronic illness.
Pretending to feel well when you don't is exhausting. The whole "fake it 'til you make it" doesn't apply here. I was just in the hospital for 3 weeks. One room. Three weeks. There is no walking around the hospital because when you have CF, you're on contact precautions for your safety. It was one of the sickest hospital stays I've ever had and by far the slowest recovery time. It took me 19 days to get to where I usually am on day 3 of a hospital visit. New problems arose this time around that never did before. Concerns for my future health is still up in the air. "Inconclusive."
I went to sleep every night in the hospital thinking that the "adult progression" of Cystic Fibrosis had finally hit me and I wasn't going to get back to where I was health-wise. I was released finally today and as happy as I was to get out of the hospital, I feel uneasy because this is the first time I have been done with treatment, having had an extra week of treatment than usual, and I still don't feel well and my lung function numbers aren't where they have always been at the end of a hospital stay. I'm lucky in a sense that this "being fully treated but not feeling better" thing has never happened before... but, then again, it's never happened before. My answers to family and friends that asked "how are you feeling today?...any pain?" etc. were always "I'm good! not too bad!" because I didn't want the actuality of it to be true for me or for whoever was asking because I didn't want them to worry.
I'm wishing I didn't do all of that. I wish I would've said, "Hey, actually I feel like I just got knocked down by a 30-ft wave while trying to get back on my surfboard for the billionth time." I wish I would've texted people, "I've been in the hospital for weeks and it would really make my day if you came to visit me," instead of feeling like it would be annoying and inconvenient for someone to come see me and just not saying anything at all.
I wish I would've told my college professors, "I can't do my assignments because this medication I'm on is causing me to misspell 5th-grade words, write the number 8 when I should be writing the letter "S" and making me forget the smallest/simplest things. I wish I would've been more concerned about myself.
That's what all this ranting I'm doing is to say. Take time for yourself. Take time for your health. Take a day or two or 7 to be "selfish" even though it's not being selfish at all. Embrace whatever illness, disease, or chronic thing you may have and don't hide the fact of it to "benefit" others. It'll all build up inside of you and when it finally comes to the surface, anxiety, stress, and frustration all come with it. Take time for you.
