Welcome To My Blog!

Hello everyone! My name is Joy and welcome to my blog! The title “Chroniic Illness Chronicles” comes from my daily struggle with chronic illness as well as those of my husband, Chris. That’s right…my husband and I both deal with chronic illness, which is highly unusual. Normallly, one spouse is the patient while the other spouse is the main caregiver. In our house, however, we are both patients and caregivers. It is a very…unique…situation. Luckily, we both knew what we were getting ourselves into. As a matter of fact, that is what brought us together in the first place, and also what helped us in deciding to not only stay together, but deciding to make it official and get married.

Finding someone, be it a friend or relative who completely understands your daily struggle with being sick is hard enough as it is. Finding that in a partner/spouse is extremely difficult.  Luckily, we were blessed to find exactly that in each other: complete understanding (of the disease and emotions that go with it), support (both physically and emotionally, and empathy in what the other is going through. Most importantly, we found true love. It is such a beautiful thing and just…well, when you find the right person, you just know. 

We hope you enjoy visiting our blog, where we will share our illnesses, our treatment failures, and our treatment successes. We want you- as a fellow chronic illness warrior- to know that you are not alone in your struggles. We want you- the caregiver- to know that you are not alone in your struggles either, and also to know the importance of self-care in order to better care for and/or support your loved one or friend.  We also want you- the healthy person looking at this from the outside- to understand what life is really like for us: the daily ups and downs, the judgements we often receive from people like yourself, just because of our “invisible” illness. We would like it if, even if you can’t see what’s wrong with us, to learn that not every illness can be seen.  Please reserve your judgements and try to be patient with us. Our journey may be different from yours right now, but nothing in life is guaranteed. We certainly didn’t expect for this to happen to us…we didn’t ask for this, so please don’t make our already difficult lives harder. Most importantly, we want you to really see what we usually don’t allow others to see, and we hope it teaches you to not take things in life for granted. You were blessed with health, so live your healthy life to the fullest while you can. Be grateful for the gift God has given you, but never take it for granted, because that same gift could be taken away in the blink of an eye…just as it was taken from us. However, because of our illnesses we were blessed as well..with patience, and with gratitude for the good days. We learned how to not only stop and smell the roses, but to admire their beauty- their shape, their color, their mere existence…because one day we may lose the ability to do so. Take life in, experience it, live it, and share it with us. Let’s work together and teach each other. We don’t want your pity.  We simply ask for your understanding!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this introductory post and continue to come back and read more!