Dear Doctors and Specialists:
I know that the symptoms I list are or can be read as contradictory to how I behave in person…
Due to the fact that I have been a single mom, I have been a leader and I have had to fight to have multiple doctors recognize and acknowledge my illness which has spanned 2/3rds of my life…
21 years out of 33
I have not had the option to be weak
Some days are worse and I cannot function or hide the pain and illness from my children or friends.
It is these days when I cannot be “normal” that scare the people in my life, because they all know how hard I will push myself to live, to have a life and to keep going.
I live day to day with chronic pain, fatigue and the fear of never being able to support myself or my children… it is that fear which motivates me to fight anyone that says I cannot do what I do and still be in pain.
The following list of symptoms took me months, if not years, to write simply due to that fear eating at me each time I sit down to think and everything vanishing from my mind.
For each pain I list, I have had to stop and sit and listen to my body…
When you live with pain as long as I have, the pains just meld together and it is only when you have an area free of pain that you notice the change… or if the pain gets worse.
I don’t remember how it feels to not have pain, I have memories from before the pain but they are just meaningless images with no reality for me anymore.
I avoid medication because the majority of the time…it doesn’t work at all or it stops working or I become allergic to it or I am the rare freak that suffers the severe side effects.
I have learned on my own to cope with music, meditation, visualization, diet changes or anything else I could learn to disassociate from the pain… simply because in America, no one believed I was ill even when there was proof if they would only look for it and in America there is no help for those that need it.
So I coped and I am still coping…
I have two decades of mental abuse from doctors and others around me saying I am just looking for attention…
Please help me to live and then help me to help others like me, those who suffer from invisible illnesses…
Shalla Lupus Lady 