Persisting Pain

My entire life, my mum has always thrown a big Christmas dinner. My grandparents would come round and we would eat her delicious food that she had been preparing for days and watch Christmas TV in our pyjamas. However, both my mum and I have multiple chronic illnesses and so this got more difficult to manage every year. A few years ago we had to make some changes that we had never planned to do, but it has turned out so much easier. We decided to start going out for Christmas dinner, at first to a local restaurant and this year we are booked into a carvery. We had always thought of Christmas as a stay-at-home, family day and thought that going out for it would take away something that made Christmas day what it was. If anything, however, it has made our Christmas day so much better! Instead of spending all of our time and energy making a massive meal that involves days of prep, pulling out and setting a table big enough for everyone, and then clearing it all up afterwards, we can...

The festive season is a time that almost everyone looks forward to. However, when you have a chronic illness, the holidays can be a difficult time for many reasons. Everyone’s illnesses affect them differently, so here are a couple of the ways that my health can taint Christmas for me: As you may know from previous posts, I have a stomach condition called gastroparesis. This means that my stomach is partially paralysed and this can cause issues including sickness, fatigue, loss of appetite, and food intolerances. Almost every holiday is focused around food, and this can make it difficult for me. A lot of the time I cannot eat without throwing up everywhere and when I can eat I am limited to small amount of specific foods in the hopes that it doesn’t make me sick. I can also be sure that if I eat I will be plagued with abdominal pains for hours afterwards. As a big foodie, this causes me enough problems on a normal day; at the holidays, this is downright awful. All of my illne...

The end of a new year and the start of the next is always marked by people looking back and deciding what they want to change about their lives. Almost everyone makes a New Years’ resolution but very few keep them. Don’t get me wrong, I have lots of things that I would like to achieve this year, but I would instead like to use the New Year to be thankful for those good things in my life that I hope will stay for 2019. I am lucky to live with some amazing people who keep my spirits up when things are rough. I live with my mum, who has spent almost twenty years driving me to different hospitals and doctors, picking up medication, driving me about because I’m too ill to use public transport, and picking me up when I am out and need to go home because I become too ill. Don’t get me wrong, we fight just like any other mother and daughter, maybe even more because of how much time we spend together. But she is also one of my best, and at times one of my only, friends. She understands...