Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

Most people don’t understand the serious emotional impact that a person dealing with a serious illness or chronic disease has to endure on a daily basis. In most cases, the fear is constant. Hours feel like years and years feel like decades. You learn to have a new appreciation for every breath you take.

When your life is on the line or there are possibilities that you might not live the future you’ve always imagined, fear and uncertainty become your new best friend as well as your worst nightmare. These feelings don’t only come up in moments of turmoil, they are constant.

Mentally, your life becomes completely different when dealing with a serious illness. Simple things become fearful. Most of the time, lying in bed is no longer relaxing. A bed is a place where you can feel your heart beat and you’re convinced it’s going to stop at any moment or give up from pounding so hard. Planning future vacations or plans is no longer joyful. How could you know how your health is going to hold up in a few months when you can barely make it through one week without an issue?

Dealing with the emotional aspects of a serious illness on top of the physical symptoms is something that almost no one understands unless they, themselves have dealt with it. Even if you are grateful enough to meet someone who understands, usually, you meet the person after you’ve spent so many days worrying alone about test results or felt the burden of getting bad news and not wanting to tell anyone.

No one should deal with that alone.

When dealing with a serious condition, I felt completely isolated. I tried to talk to my friends, but no one understood. How could they? They were 27-year-olds living a normal 27-year-old life, and here I was sleeping 16 hours a day completely exhausted going from one appointment to the next. Living far away from home made it even more difficult. I felt so isolated. All I needed was a little support…

I searched for online resources. I searched everything to find support from others who were dealing with the emotional isolation of a serious illness, like myself. The hard part was, I didn’t want to deal with my specific health problem. Targeting my searches to those specifics made my fear and anxiety worse. I just wanted a generic hand to hold, an escape, someone who could relate to what I was going through… but I never found that.

I told myself I was going to create something to help other people in a similar situation. My goal is so that no one will be alone in their emotional fight. It’s taken me 7 months to create this blog due to my illness, but I’m here and I’m ready. I feel so much better after my procedure, however, I’ve been finding lately that when you think it’s over, it isn’t. I’ve been finding myself in the situation again where I need emotional support. If I’m in this situation, I know there are so many others out there that are as well.

I’ve created this blog to help people with the emotional battles that go along with a serious illness, injury, or chronic disease. The purpose of this blog is not for us to share our sad, sappy stories. The purpose is to empower each other and be a shoulder to lean on when someone needs it most. I’d like for us to turn the fear of late nights lying in bed to feelings of relaxation and dreaming.

Please join me in joining you. ❤ Together, we will make it through.