Invisible illness.

We may look find on the outside, that is why it is called invisible illness. Not many people understand illnesses that they can't understand. How much physical pain, fatigue, tests, drugs, hospital we endure... Nearly all invisible illnesses have no cure, actually I can't think of any that do have a cure!

We DON'T suffer from illness. We FIGHT it! We are strong.

People with visible illnesses are often judged because they look ill and people don't know how to approach or treat them. I have experienced a case of this myself where I was in a wheelchair with mum and someone asked mum "how is she?" rather than asking me, how I was.   This is not to say that those who suffer invisible illnesses don't get the same amount of judgement, but rather, we get different judgement.  "Why don't you get up and do something". "If you did more, you wouldn't be so tired." "You don't look ill" "Why do you have a disabled badge" ---- these are just a few of the statements that nearly every one of us living with an invisible illness has heard at some point or another.

We may not look ill, but the fact is that we are, we are on medications, some of which are extremely lethal. Take one of mine for example which cuts out the receptors to the bodies white blood cells, meaning I can rarely fight away any infections, colds, bugs or flu without medical intervention. Most of us are in pain 24/7, of course you can't see pain... but trust me, you can feel it and when the pain is so extreme, it is near impossible to block it out. You won't hear us complaining about something basic like a cold, or simple backache --- when we mean pain, we mean pain and we endure it and keep on going! As a side effect of our illness we all feel fatigued, getting up and doing things every day is not easy when you are so tired. Even the days when we can't get up, we keep on going, keep on fighting and remain positive!

We may have our occasional bad days, but we keep going and we take each day as it comes and see the bad ones as just a minor blip - we don't let them stand in our way. We just shrug it off as if nothing happened, for tomorrow is a brand new start, a brand new day and we can pretend that yesterday never happened.

Invisible illness is never going to drag us down and we'll all stay positive. We'll all keep our heads held high and be proud of who we are. With a smile upon our faces, we keep ourselves going no matter what is thrown at us. Together we unite, whilst illness we fight.