But you don’t look sick………

But you don’t look sick……………………………………………………..

I hear this all the time!  Looks can be very deceiving on the outside. RA is mostly an INVISABLE disease. The disease is not identical to the next persons and there are different levels of severity. Hearing that “you don’t look sick” is a tough part of the illness since we hurt from the inside it is not physically visible to the outsider. At times I never know what to say. Sometimes I say “thank you, I guess” or “lip gloss and a smile hide a lot”. I’m always afraid to say how I actually feel.  No one wants to hear “I’m having a major flare up and am in tremendous amounts of pain.” So I just smile through my pain, sometimes cry when no one is looking and fight battles that no one knows about.

The bad thing is because you do not look sick, you do not always get the understanding, compassion, and support that you sometimes need. People will tend to look at you with either empathy or they’ll look at you with disgust as if your disease isn’t real.

Having an autoimmune disease is like riding a wave of pain, emotion and physical limitations. It just drains you! It’s like you’re constantly being pushed and pulled to your breaking point and it never ends.  

Chronic pain forces you to keep thinking of what was, what could have been and what’s to come and how the pain will affect it all………….. It’s the ugly truth about a chronic disease.

Still finding my om with RA…………..

Peace, Love and Light to all!