Chronic Disease is one lasting 3 months or more, by the definition of the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics. Chronic diseases generally cannot be prevented by vaccines or cured by medication, nor do they just disappear.
Roughly 7. Same color orange, same adhesive label. Numbers, names, my name. That’s what a good day looks like. But what a good day feels like, that is something I can no longer remember. I was born on the wrong side of the hill, breaths are shorter, pains are greater, always rains, and the snow doesn’t melt. My body feeling much older than it actually is. It’s said that it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile. But how many muscles does it take to cover up a frown with a smile? I creak and groan like a house older than I am. Hospital beds becoming a new kind of torture chambers representing the unanswered questions and never-ending tests.
Finding any excuse to escape the grasp and impending doom that comes with entering the sliding glass doors of varying doctors offices, my personal inferno. Doom pertaining to the mystery that is my health, even with the irony that comes with calling it that. Health, medicine, treatment… all words commonly repeated by varying physicians with an inability to follow through with the necessary results to make life worth living again. The number of false promises continuing to rise as my ability to conjure up any false hope drops making the answer “no” less of a surprise. I’ve learnt that no matter who I see, what tests they run, and what lifestyle changes I make, daily pain is ingrained into what it means to be myself.
But when your entire life has been based on a hospital, you have to learn to find ways to look on the bright side. With the amount of radiation I’ve been exposed to I have come to expect that one morning I will wake up with amazing powers. Isn't that what's supposed to happen after you digest anything with radiation? And with the blood, they have siphoned from my veins one would believe that they now have enough DNA to create another version of me. Which would be a terrible idea. I also now know enough about the uses and placing of various objects in patient rooms making becoming a doctor an actual possibility. I've also decided that once they have the audacity to finally name whatever disease plagues me, it shall be named after myself. Because when whatever this is kills me, I need to be remembered somehow. It's either that or I am the literal start of the zombie apocalypse. Goodbye, cruel world.
The dichotomy that represents my feelings towards this subject magnified by persistent optimism and then followed by powerful realism. Similar to the euphoric fear that comes with riding a roller coaster, the dips and rises that come with rejection and with hope, leaving me screaming and yet smiling. Although it's not everyone's ideal situation, I'm here to enjoy the ride, even when I hate it.
