Category: Health Journey

Health Journey

Up and Down and Up and Down and Up and Down

Teresa Love

There are a lot of rollercoaster emotions involved with having a chronic illness. Sometimes I feel like I am handling everything great, content and semi happy. Other times I am so distraught and unhappy about where my life is. This tends to happen when I am trying to do something as basic as getting myself a drink and I am not able to do it. I plan it all out in my head. I walk with my walker to the kitchen, then I grab my cup from the cupboard, then I walk to the fridge and get ice as I wait for the ice to come I start to feel tightness in chest and shortness of breathe. I think I can just push through it, “come on just a few more minutes…” but then I realize nope I need to go lay down. I look at my cup and all it has is ice. So I politely ask my mom to pour my drink.

That is an average day in the life of a chronically ill person. Something as basic as getting a drink can make me so upset and frustrated with myself. I have learned to not be hard on myself because honestly it doesn’t help at all. There are times when I need to just rest and being chronically ill your body never gets the rest it needs, so I never feel well rested.

I follow a few different people on Instagram who are chronically ill. I follow this one girl named chronicallyhealed and she found out how to heal herself from POTS and Lyme disease. WOW, wouldn’t that be amazing to be back to life. To go out with friends again, go on dates, go shopping, go on vacations especially Hawaii and just live my life again.

Okay, okay I know I am still technically living my life. I mean I am here so that counts right. But just as Genie says from Aladdin “but to be my own master, such a thing would be greater than all the treasures in the world..” To not let me illness control every second of my day.

I just want to wake up healthy again, this post isn’t to make anyone sad it’s to remind you that you are blessed and your health is very important don’t take it for granted.

One of the most annoying things with being chronically ill is tomorrow or next month or next year I would wake up and be totally healthy and that not knowing is the hardest thing. So right now I decide in this very moment to LIVE for the moment! I choose to be content. If I want to play with makeup today I decide to. If I want to go to Ulta or the bookstore with my walker and my mom I decide to. If I want to sing today I decide to. If I want to create a YouTube video today I decide to. If I want to go outside I decide to. Do you understand the pattern we HAVE the ABILITY to make our own decisions and that is sooo POWERFUL.

I know you can’t choose what happens to you but you can choose how react to it and sometimes that can be more powerful than the circumstances.

I wrote this 2 years ago and it’s even more true today.

Love, T

Health Journey

Can You Trust?

Teresa Love

I came across a post on Instagram of a fellow Spoonie today. She was showing her painting that she has been working on, it made me smile.

When I was first diagnosed with CFS/ME the doctor told me that it happens to woman between the age of 20 and 30, perfectionists, driven, and creative.

Well that’s me…

When I first heard that it honestly freaked me out like “should I have not pushed myself so hard?” “Could I have changed my path?” “And why did this happen to me?”

Growing up we are told to “do our best, try hardest, and never settle for mediocrity.” I always heard these phrases growing up and thought “yes I can do this, I may not be the smartest in school but I will always work my butt off “Could this be why I am sick?” All this pushing and striving for perfection?”

These thoughts go through my mind more often than not I would haven to admit. But I need to remember is they are just thoughts and it only matters what I do NEXT. Do I let these thoughts control my mind and body and let it control how I feel emotionally?

I don’t believe any of this! I know there is a big, huge, unbelievable plan for me. God is always here. Even in my darkest moments God is there hugging me.

In the world we always want to find the reason WHY. Why did your friend get sick? Where does cancer come from? Why does this happen to people? What will happen after we die, like I know Heaven but what Is it really like? Why is there violence and hate in this world? The truth is the ONLY one who know is God. He knows every single plan, moment, and person.

All we can do is trust in the Lord with all of our hearts. And I know that’s is to say and hard to do but I have learned through thick and thin, through negative and positive moments, through losing friends and making new ones God is ALWAYS there. And we need to trust in HIM wholeheartedly. Not for just this second, but every single second after that and with EVERYTHING.

So I ask you? Can you trust God wholeheartedly?

Health Journey

On June 26th A Year

Teresa Love

Today marks a year.

A year of being sick.

A year of feeling alone.

A year of people not understanding what I’m going through.

A year of willing and wishing to get better and each day it stays the same.

A year of prayer to get better and for something good to come out of it.

A year of tears and crying sessions.

A year of planning things and then having to cancel because I am still sick.

A year of having to stop going to church.

It’s been a whole year. I am not normally a person who remembers dates but I do have a few in my life that really stick out. Christmas: December 25th, My birthday: October 21st, My cancer diagnosis day: October 18th, and the day my episode started last year: June 26th.

This day, June 26th, has been on my mind for a while now. I kept putting goals in place. Last July I was thinking, “I will totally be better by my birthday in October.” Then I wasn’t. Christmas is in 2 months, “I have to be better by then.” Again it didn’t happen. These “goals” made me feel like a failure, like I couldn’t “make myself better.” Like my faith wasn’t strong enough to get me through this difficult time. “I can’t be sick for another month this is crazy,” I kept telling myself. I was almost in a dazed state of confusion that this was still happening.

Then my episode hit the 6 month mark and I was so ready for it to be over. By this time I had been away from church for 6 months, hadn’t been able to leave the house much, finished all the Netflix shows I could think of, and was just ready to “start my life again.” Start my life again? That implies that I stopped living when I got sick. I “died.”

But I DIDN’T die, I am still here. I am still breathing.

Sure, my life looks very different than it used to. But I can use my mind in anyway I want and I CHOOSE to make my own decisions. If I want to be artistic, I can. If I want to text my friends, I can. If I want to tell my mom a long, step by step story of exactly what happened in the show I am currently watching, I can. The bottom line is I can’t control what gets thrown at me but I can control the outcome. If I am too tired to do something one day then I can choose to do it  another day.

It’s all about decisions. As much as we think our days are all mapped out, I am here to say they are not. Even someone who works everyday doesn’t know if something will happen and they can’t go to work that next day. We never know.

That’s why for my life I choose to live in the PRESENT. I base my decisions on the now, and not push and hope looking at the future because in all honesty I don’t have that luxury right now.

Live in the Present.

Health Journey

Decisions

Teresa Love

It’s funny how we can procrastinate when we know we need to do something that we just don’t want to do. Or wish the problem hopefully goes away. Like when we are supposed to be losing weight or eating healthy and just because we have to, we choose not to.

Today I am so exhausted.  I did not sleep well last night because I was worrying about an appointment, and once it was over I was so tired from all the anxiety and stress that went along with preparing for the appointment. I know I need to nap, but I really just don’t want to. And if I don’t want to do something, believe me, I really won’t do it.

I sometimes pride myself in being able to decide what I want to do and I don’t let myself get pushed into anything.  I never give in to peer pressure. If it’s a really serious thing, I need to do (like when I needed back surgery for scoliosis) I did what I needed to to prepare and forged ahead.

Now today, I kept telling my mom that I was tired. So she said, “Do I need to take you in the car, so that you can fall asleep like when you were little”? That just made me smile and laugh. Threw me back to a time when life was just easier. I didn’t have this illness. I didn’t have fear at all. I didn’t have to worry about relationships or money problems. I could just be a child.

There is a bible verse that says “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man (woman), I put the ways of childhood behind me.”

1 Corinthians 13:11 NIV

It was much simpler when we were children, running around outside, finger painting and not caring about the mess, eating whatever you wanted, meeting new friends at the grocery store. Now we are adults and we may have put away childish things, minus things we still like (Disney movies).

I think it’s totally fine to think about the past and the easier times in life as long as it makes you smile and you move on, continuing to move forward to the present and into the future.

Health Journey

Let Go, Let God

Teresa Love

We are just moving through life with good things happening. But then something comes up, interrupts our lives, whether it’s a change you weren’t expecting, a death in the family, an illness, an accident, losing a job, or moving. We are just going along “skipping through the tulips,” when all of the sudden BAM! And it’s very easy to drown in self pity.

This can create a situational depression, the feeling of hopelessness, sadness, worthlessness, and overall negative emotions. I am not afraid to say I have struggled with all of that before and am currently still working at it each day.

When your life changes in the blink of an eye it tends to hit you hard. That’s how I felt when my life went from “living my best life”, to not having the ability to do any of the things I used to do let alone get out of the house. My chronic illnesses really interrupted my life…but does it have to be an interruption? What if it could be just a whole other path to take?

Often, when life is going good it’s easy to push God to the backseat of your car and say “I’m good, just living my life.” Then when a crisis occurs, it’s hard to let God steer when He is stuck in the backseat. I have always given God the wheel and have trusted Him to take me wherever He wants and have tried not to be a backseat driver. That’s why I love the Carrie Underwood song “Jesus Take the Wheel.”

When that illness, fear, accident, negative situation happens, you are armed with the Holy Spirit to fight your battles not for you but WITH you. I do struggle with depression and sadness through all this illness, but each day I am working through it, getting the help I need, and letting God use me in any way I can even if it’s just through this blog.