What kind? Do they have Chronic Pain? Chronic Fatigue? Dietary illnesses? Connective tissue diseases? Autoimmune disorders? Something made up or fantasy based? Something else entirely?
What does their day-to-day look like? Maybe they don't need a Whumper to be suffering. Can they take care of themselves, or do they need help? Do they get that help? What happens if they don't? What happens if there is a Whumper using this against them, or a Caretaker who doesn't understand? Make them flare up, then worsen all their symptoms!
For invisible illnesses; Do people believe them when they say they're sick even though no one can see it on the outside? Do they struggle with not being able to see what they feel themselves?
For more visible illnesses; Do they face discrimination and ableism? Do people treat them differently, do people infantalise them? How do they feel about that?
Questions;
What are their symptoms like?
Do they flare up?
If their health worsens, will it ever recover?
Do they mourn the life they had before it got to this point?
Do they have a diagnosis, or even know what's wrong?
What gives them respite?
What makes them worse?
Do they suffer with mental health issues as well, and are they because of the Chronic Illness or a secondary thing to suffer?
Pain;
Neuropathic pain;
Widespread, often nerve based pains from a nervous system disease or disorder
Allodynia- tactile, thermal or mechanical allodynia, even the lightest touch can hurt, and your skin feels raw and bruised. Pressing on it hurts deeply, to the bone. Pain can worsen with temperature fluctuations, warm and/or cold.
Parasthesia- peripheral neuropathy, partial or full numbness, tingling, pricking, vice like or lightning-like pains, weakness in the affected areas. Can worsen with compression, such as restraints or stress positions, and can come and go.
Nociceptive pain;
Somatic sharp pain that's localised to the affected area and can be caused by long term, unhealing or reocurrent damage and injury
Visceral aching pain that's widespread and can be caused by systemic disease
Inflammation- hot, aching pains that throb incessantly, seizing joints and knotted muscles, brain fog, headaches and sluggish thoughts, stabbing tendons and sharp pain in ligaments, swelling, tenderness and redness
Dislocations, subluxations and connective tissue weakness, weak joints that can contort beyond what is normal, soft skin that bruises breaks and scars with ease, never ending joint pain, grinding bone against bone and broken cartlidge, permanently altered movements from ligament damage, agonisingly powerful sharp stabbing pains at certain movements
General:
Pain that's worst when waking. Pain that gets worse throughout the day. Pain that's worse in heat or in cold, pain that changes with the weather
Dissociation as a way to cope with the pain, to the point when they realise just where hurts it's like being hit by a truck. Depersonalization to the point they don't know who they even are, they don't feel alive, these limbs are not their own. Derealisation to the point reality feels like it's taken a step to the left, like they're a ghost and the real world is behind a pane of glass. Both blanketing over them in a desperate attempt by the brain to stop the pain that would have them screaming without it.
Pain that they no longer respond to, what's the use in screaming when it never ends. Chronic pain that masks the acute pain of injuries they didn't realise you had. (Ask me how I know...) Chronic pain that has medical professionals shocked at how little they react to things that cause severe pain. Chronic pain that wears down their tolerance for everything else, that makes them snappy, irritable and angry.
Vice like pains, twisting clawing tearing inside muscles, pain when they move, speak, even breathe.
Pain that never ends and isn't touched by most medications. Pain that IS helped by some medications, but the side affects are terrible, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, hallucinations, bladder and bowel issues, slurred speech and a hazy mind
Pain they cannot see that drives them to hurt themselves on purpose just to feel in control of it, just to be able to see what they feel upon their skin
Pain that will make them do anything for it to stop, pain that takes their hope away, robs them of their dreams, makes them want to end it all
Fatigue;
Fatigue that drives a haze over their brain and tears their memory to shreds. Slurred words, sentences said in the wrong order, fatigue that has neurological bases. Fatigue that turns a once sharp mind into a rambling incoherent mess. The ability to read, write, speak, listen all taken away, so the world becomes an incoherent mess too.
Fatigue that causes insomnia, so they end up physically exhausted AND fatigued at the same time
Fatigue that's worsened with light, sound and being upright, and can only be managed by aggressive resting, lying still in the silent darkness.
Fatigue that comes in waves, fatigue that flares if they overexert; Post Exertional Malaise, limbs weak and pumped full of lead, tachycardia, inability to stand or walk, inability to eat, think, drink, speak
Fatigue that feels like the flu, fever, swollen glands, hoarse throat and blood pressure dysregulation, fainting and dehydration
Dark circles under eyes that only seem to worsen over time. Weight loss and muscle wastage, ability draining away.
Fatigue that feels like dying whilst alive, that no one understands, that isolates until there's nothing left. Fatigue that strips of everything that made them who they were, until they are just a shell of a living thing.
Make your Whumpees Chronically Ill.
Sincerely, a Chronically Ill fuck who is suffering far too much today and wants to see more representation.
This are purely based on my own experiences, and is by no means exhaustive, hell, I've only scratched the very surface of my own chronic illnesses here.
