Invisible Illness

Last week was Invisible Illness week and Kerri has inspired me to write a bit about it. http://kerriontheprairies.com

My own life is probably not the best example since I don't feel that I'm that different and have to adapt my life that much to cope, and I'm lucky that way. I look normal and healthy and most of the time I am. My asthma is very mild, and if I avoid my triggers I don't have an issue. The problems arise when I try to do something out of the ordinary...this past week, I decided to go to a restaurant with my friends downtown and there was a lot of construction and dust, and that set of an asthma attack which I haven't had in a while and was sort of unprepared for. I started wheezing, hyperventilating, coughing and feeling lightheaded. I of course, tried to hide it for a while and didn't want to make them alarmed but in the end I told them I couldn't go through another construction zone because I couldn't breathe. At the restaurant my breathing thankfully normalized and I forgot all about it.

The incident though got me thinking about the small things I do to try to avoid triggers and how it can inconvenience some people. I generally try to avoid walking downtown because of the dust, cars, pollution and smoke. I try to avoid touching common surfaces (busses), and avoid sitting next to people that cough to not get their cold since its a major trigger. I no longer eat any food outside of my home with my hands for the above reasons, and I almost never accept food from other people also due to the fear of getting sick. Most of these things are really minor to me but for some reason other people find it a bit crazy (just a bit) and even when I explain my logic they still don't truly get it. For them, if they get sick, its just 3 days of a cold, and most can go to school and function normally. For me though, its usually a week of staying home, in bed, with a severe cough and sometimes fever, chest-tightness and wheezing, and them possible another week of antibiotics because the bacteria multiplies more readily. It's ironic that with my phobia of getting sick, I decided to go into the health care field.

Of course this got me thinking about who else I know that also has an invisible illness. My circle of friends and family include people with hyperthyroidism/hypothyroidism, autism, bipolar, 1 eye blindness, Rheumatoid arthritis, PCOS, insomnia, food allergies, liver issues, depression, and leukemia(treatable).

In my own clinical experiences, I've interacted with people with parkinson's, MS, CP, stroke, ABI, cancer, alzeimer's, where depending on their stage/progression, might appear perfectly normal, but are using all the energy they have to make that type of appearance. Is it worth it though?

In the end the biggest difference we can make is advocacy and education. If more people understood the difficulties people with invisible and visible illnesses face, more would be willing to make adaptations to help make everyone's life a little easier. So next time you see someone coughing while you're smoking, consider putting out that cigarette; next time you frown when someone asks you to not being a peanut to school realize that you could save their life and next time you're frustrated that you can't understand someone's speech, realize that they could have had a stroke and are trying their hardest to talk.