Chronically Fabulous

Welcome to Chronicles of a Chronic Illness :) I'm a Fibromyalgia and Multiple Sclerosis spoonie from the UK. I started this blog with the intention of spreading comfort, humor and personal experiences with those who also have a chronic illness and awareness to those that do not. The ask box is always open for a chat, questions or help! var sc_project=10818415; var sc_invisible=1; var sc_security="9ffd7647"; var scJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://secure." : "http://www."); document.write("");

[http-lovecore]

Sunshine boy himself, Evan Peters

[sunflower-cane]

#JustSpoonieThings

when you try to explain your chronic fatigue and you have one person telling you it sounds fake and another person saying they know EXACTLY how you feel because they get tired too sometimes.

[chroniclesofachronicillness]

Hi, Do you think it would be okay to reblog the post that I most recently reblogged about Multiple Sclerosis? (I originally made the post but it won't let me send people asks/messages on the account I used because I didn't make it with a separate email) Me and my team have raised £125 for our cause already. You don't have to donate if you're unable to, but it would be fantastic if you could like or reblog the post. We're aiming to raise as much awareness for MS as possible Thank you :)

I've reblogged it on my new blog, PositivityInPain :) I live in Sussex so this is something very close to my heart! Thank you so, so much for all your work!

[iamatinyowl]

The thing about chronic pain is once you’ve had it for long enough you can’t remember what not being in pain felt like. You only recognize it as ‘not as debilitating as usually’ or ‘very much more fucking debilitating than usual’ so you have no grasp anymore of what it’s like to do things without factoring your pain levels in and people who aren’t in constant pain think that if you’re having a ‘good pain day’ it means you’re not in pain and should be able do to things. But having a good pain day doesn’t mean you’re not in pain, it means you’re in less than excruciating pain. Maybe your pain is low enough that you can ignore it. But people who don’t live in pain don’t understand that ignoring it takes energy, and even if it’s low enough that we can ignore it doesn’t mean it’s gone and it doesn’t mean we want to go out and do a bunch of things that will make it so bad it cannot be ignored.

[howshouldwetreatme]

WHEN SOMEONE SEES YOU STAND UP FROM YOUR WHEELCHAIR

[chroniclesofachronicillness]

Me: [has a weird emotional reaction to smth]

Me: who did that

Personality: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Mental illnesses: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Medication: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[chronic-illness-cat]

[picture of a Siamese cat’s head against a triangle-sectioned background with many shades of blue. Top line of text reads: In too much pain to get stuff done. Stressed about needn’t to get stuff done. || Bottom line of text reads: Pain worsens stress. Stress worsens pain.]

[willtogrow]

UGH ME

[illness-adnauseum]

Does anybody else feel like you’re not allowed to talk about your illnesses and disabilities if any healthy abled person in the room has talked about their life problems in the past 20 minutes because they’ll think you’re trying to say “I have it way worse than you, your problems are so insignificant compared to mine”?

[crypticcripple]

My thoughts when my joints are hurting me:

I should have been born a jelly fish

[chronic-confessions]

Confession #658

I dont even know what good is supposed to feel like anymore

[chroniclesofachronicillness]

doctor: rate your pain on a scale of 1-10.

me: which pain? joint pain? muscle pain? nerve pain? chronic pain? acute pain? back pain? leg pain? shoulder pain? hand pain? pain from-

doctor: just all of your pain. overall.

me: well my joint pain is usually-

doctor: nevermind.

[whatshouldwecallchronicillness]

When someone tells me I just need to get outside more often...

[willow-wanderings]

Being in pain is a lot of work

I hate that no one really talks about how exhausting it is to be in pain.

Why is this never really discussed? I would think it’s obvious. Your body exerts a lot of energy to be in pain; muscles tense and cramp (seriously, flex your arm as hard as you can, now hold it like that for an entire day without ever relaxing it even once, you think that’s not going to make you tired?), nerves spend all day sending signals that make it feel like all your joints are full of static electricity, constantly measuring your breathing and movement to try not to make the pain worse takes effort and concentration (which is not a zero-calorie affair, your brain burns more calories to actively concentrate on things), those involuntary twitches whenever the pain spikes aren’t cost-free either and a lot of little movements add up, trying to hold a specific posture so that the pain isn’t quite as bad is a lot of work, and on and on and on.

Now imagine that being every single day of your life and try to tell me I can’t be tired because “all pain does is hurt.”

[bendyandbroken-archived-deactiv]

[mamas-still-doing-it-all]

The main thing that makes having a chronic illness so hard is the fact that doctors, nurses and others don’t care or believe how sick we are.

(via mamas-still-doing-it-all)

[college-shenanigans-deactivated]

When someone says, "But you're too young to have arthritis!"

[chronicillnessbyash]

Our Story

We met online a few months after Ryuu died (my Peterbald… he’s the middle picture), and right after Charles’s dad died (2013). He was living with his grandparents, because he mother died when he was very young. His grandparents are racist assholes who mentally and emotionally abused Charles, every chance they got. 

We started dating almost a year later, I think it was… Things started to get hairy and he moved to CA to be with me, a few days after his birthday, this year (he turned 20). Everyone in the house thought this was a great idea. Steph was all for it. Told him he could stay in the room in the garage for a small monthly payment, which wasn’t a big deal, because plans had changed and he couldn’t pop a tent on the roof and sleep up there (issues with our landlord being weird about certain things)…

But then things changed. Benny and Steph started to bully Charles. Much in the way that they try and bully me…. He was looking for a job for like 3 months… and Steph kept spouting things like “the agreement was 2 weeks!” and that wasn’t even a thing. There was no agreement of anything. He applied to every place he could. He didn’t get a call back until like a couple of weeks ago. they promised him full time, and he hasn’t gotten it yet… 

He was able to cash in the IRA his father set up for him. We moved into a room they were trying to rent out… we payed two months in advance. Bought a few things… And the agreement was, that if he couldn’t pay rent, come August 1st, HE would get kicked out. It sucks. We agreed it wasn’t ideal. But that since he was able bodied, sleeping in his car wasn’t that big a deal. We are saving what we can and doing what we can. But it isn’t enough.

Then one night, I overhear Steph talking to Benny or Jeff… Saying that she was worried about “all the money they are spending because if they can’t pay rent, they both get kicked out”… WHICH WAS NOT PART OF THE ORIGINAL AGREEMENT…

I am VERY disabled. I have A LOT of illnesses (they are listed in my FAQ page)… and I cannot be homeless. If we get kicked out, I will have to leave my cat behind.. and it worries me. She is MY emotional support animal. I can’t be without her.

Charles can’t pay his insurance on his car and if we get kicked out, he won’t be able to keep going to work and we won’t have a place to sleep if he looses his car. This is SO important.

He had plans to get his car plates and is driver license changed over to CA ones, and get the car’s emission’s tested and reinstate his insurance (Something that will cost well over $300… which is almost half our rent payment - which is $700 by the way)… He was going to do that, so that he can apply for the electricians apprenticeship, which would solve most of our issues. But we can’t risk the money for that because of the risk of losing a roof over our head if we can’t pay rent.

So please. If you can, buy something. Or donate. Or reblog. Or all three. Whatever works for you.

We desperately need help. This is so important.

Ways you can help:

Etsy - I make things with yarn and I also started selling soaps as well. I take commissions!

Patreon - monthly support! You can use PayPal even, and Patrons who pay a little more, get better rewards! (Currently updating!)

Amazon Wish List - unsure where your money is going, but still want to help? Order something, for us, on Amazon! There are things we need but cannot afford! There are other lists (as you can see) but while viewing this particular list, if you could select “Priority (High to Low)”, that would be fantastic! :)

PayPal - any amount of donating

Edit to add (6/25/2015):

from Charles (THIS post he just made):

So we were just told if we don’t think we’ll make rent for September, they want to know ASAP because they’ll have a better chance finding roommates in/for August than September. We were told the same about August, but that was the original deal. Now they’re asking us to essentially make a wild, spitballing guess, based on my very variable hours, about whether we’ll make rent three months from now. And if we can’t, they want us out next month. I don’t know how many more times they’re going to pull stuff like this on us, but I do know it’s getting worse.

Basically, if you know anyone in the Ventura/Santa Barbara area of California in need of roommates that are perfectly happy to help with housework, please let me know.