“She is fighting cancer”! “Such a little warrior!” “She is battling illness”. These sorts of phrases are very common when talking about illness and disability. People often fall back on the metaphor of fighting and battle, or the disability war metaphor. Yet this is something about which the chronic illness community has very mixed opinions:… More Am I an ME warrior? The disability war metaphor
On the way home from my weekly work shift, when I was still well enough to work, I was always exhausted – and often shaking and sweating. I would take the metro, on a very busy line, and would often end up standing the entire way home, despite knowing that I might pass out at… More Do we need more invisible disability awareness?
I was actually midway through writing a different, but very closely connected, blog post (of which I will post an edited version very soon), when I saw the following news, and felt I had to write down my emotional response to that, instead. Sadly, the main takeaway from the original post had been my fear… More Long-covid and ME: what’s in a name?
Today’s post is written by fellow blogger, and an online chronic illness friend of mine, Liv Hamil. I’ve been following Liv’s blog for a while now and love it. We decided it would be fun to write a post for each others blogs. So, as both of us spend a lot of time on social… More Writing my way out of my bedroom
I became sick in January 2015, or potentially earlier if I look back over my health records from the years before that. I did not receive an official diagnosis until September 2018. That is almost four years later. This is by no means unusual – in fact, some would consider it a very quick diagnosis… More A diagnosis is an important part of dealing with disability
When looking through my bookshelves recently, I realised that I had read very few books about people with disabilities, and even less about people with chronic illnesses. I grew up reading books like What Katy Did, and The Secret Garden, where chronic illness is usually treated euphemistically or else there is a miracle cure –… More Chronic illness book recommendations
My fitness level, last time I got it checked, was that of an unfit 69-year-old. How do I know? When I was getting my ME diagnosis, I was hooked up to an exercise bike and a lot of different machines measuring different things. After analysing this data, it was compared to an ‘unfit average’ for… More Living with ME and POTS – my physical symptoms
I recently decided to start using a wheelchair. This is a really big thing for me. For the past several years I have been running away from the fact that a wheelchair would be useful, but thinking about it constantly. In fact, I’m sure my close friends are quite bored with being asked if they… More The journey to becoming a wheelchair user
Today’s post is a guest post from blogger Pippa Stacey. She has written an incredibly useful guide to university for chronically ill people – something I wish I had read whilst I was studying. Unfortunately due to Corona a lot of Pippa’s book launch had to be cancelled. So lets try and make this book… More Pursuing Education, University and Employment with a Chronic Illness
Humans live in communities. We live in villages, towns and cities, and we see our family, friends and colleagues regularly. Humans live together. Yet despite this, there is a drive for us to be independent, to provide for ourselves financially and look after ourselves by ourselves. We are considered to have made it if we are… More The myth of independence: is it harmful?