Anyone that has a chronic illness or chronic pain knows what it's like to feel a hell of a lot older than you are. It can be such a really hard thing to battle with when having chronic illness or pain, for me it's been particularly hard because it keeps bringing back thoughts that if this is what I am like at 31, god help me once I have kids or become an old lady. During 2024, I'm implementing lifestyle changes to try and help me manage my health whilst achieving what I want to achieve.
The last 6 months, I feel like my body is playing health condition bingo, it just seems to be collecting one health condition after another and nothing seems to be letting up. My health professionals seem to have become like family I see them that much and to be honest we all don't really know what's going on. It's been a combination of pain worsening, getting diagnosed with a new condition that causes more pain in my back, my migraines not letting up (they're currently at 16 in the last month) and so far medication not helping. Not going to lie, sometimes I do have days where it's hard to want to get up the next day and carry on knowing it's going to be another day of pain, fatigue, the anxiety of not knowing if another migraines is going to happen that day and what after effects I'm going to have from the previous migraine.
At the end of 2023, I finally did something that I never thought my health was bad enough for. But after having that asthma attack towards the end of 2023 that left me hospitalised with pneumonia and off for work 6 weeks afterwards, I made the decision to apply for PIP which if you didn't know is a benefit for people who have chronic illnesses. It can be a whole process to go through and even from just writing the application form, I really just how much I mask things or play things down to play down how bad my health is.
With everything going on, it's hard to muster up the energy to do anything and I'm so proud that I've been able to keep on going with blogging and social media with the way my health has gone but I find that doing blogging and social media gives me a creative outlet to momentarily forget about all the pain, anxiety, migraines, fatigue and sleep issues. Between me starting to write this blog post and posting it, I've seen my medical teams again and I've now got a referral to a neurologist for my migraines which is a step hopefully in the right direction. Unfortunately my pain has gone in the opposite direction, it's affecting my amount of sleep I'm able to get and my sleep quality as well as limiting what I can currently do so please bear with me as things are a bit delayed.
It's become harder and harder to manage with the anxiety and realisation of my health worsening. As my GP said, we started off so optimistic when we were first trying to treat the problem but now I've been dealing with it for a while and it's just getting worse it's hard to stay positive but keeping to as much of a routine as I can and getting up is so important right now so bear with me whilst I'm just trying to exist and function day to day as I feel like my body is about 50 years older than it really is.
Anyone else feeling a lot older than they are?
Speak to you next time!
