Persisting Pain

So I’ve just completed my first month on the Slimming World diet, which has been great fun although difficult as I love desserts! I’ve found some amazing low syn or even syn free recipes though which I’m planning on posting in the coming weeks, but this post is more of an introduction. Between my fast metabolism and my stomach condition (gastroparesis), I spend the first 18 years of my life underweight and struggling to gain and body mass. Then my medication changed and I started gaining weight FAST. Currently I am three stone heavier than I’d like to be. Maybe that’s not as much as some other people would like to lose – I am a fairly average body size and don’t look very overweight – but to me that is a big change. I can’t stop the tablets that are making me put on weight so I am trying to lose it healthily, which is why I turned to the Slimming World diet. Slimming World is more of a lifestyle change than a diet. It’s all about managing food, having the right food most of th...

**MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD** As some of you might know, a big part of why I started a blog was because of how much Claire Wineland inspired me. Claire was a young woman who got dealt a rubbish hand in life but still won. She lived her life despite having cystic fibrosis and although she died last year aged 21, she achieved so much. She inspired thousands, reminding lots of us with chronic illness that we aren’t alone, and she even set up her own charity to help others living with chronic illness. When I found out that Claire was a consultant on a movie about chronic illness and long term hospital stays as a teen, I couldn’t wait to see it. I was so sure that she wouldn’t let the right messages be lost and, although she unfortunately died before the movie’s release, her influence is clear throughout the entire movie. The protagonist, Stella, was heavily influenced by Claire and everything from her appearance to her attitude towards her illness shows this. Watching the movie ...

It’s been three weeks now since I finally made the decision to hand in my notice of resignation to work. I loved my job, and loved the people I worked with; it was not an easy decision to leave. But the impact on my health was becoming too much and it wasn’t fair to my work to be constantly phoning in sick and leaving them without anyone to do the job. Making the decision to quit wasn’t as simple as it may be for others, because for me it wasn’t just “this job isn’t working for me, I will try something else”. For me, it meant “having a job isn’t working for me. I am not capable of juggling work and my health at the moment. I need to stop trying and making myself more ill”. For me, giving up my job was giving up my chance of success, my opportunity to socialise, my independence. It meant admitting that I had to rely on those around me to support me. And it meant admitting again that there was something – a basic life skill – that I couldn’t do because of my health. In my eyes, ...