Hi there! My name is Stephanie, and I’ve been dealing with chronic pain for what feels like forever. But in reality is just a little over nine years.
I talk about it a lot, explaining the everyday struggles that people who deal with chronic pain face, as well as the various treatments I’ve tried along the way.
Honestly, most of it is fairly serious stuff, but like all things in life, there are ups and downs, and even in a serious subject like this, you can sometimes find a way to laugh.
Because chronic pain can be quite an isolating experience, finding a community online has been one of the most uplifting things to happen to me. Now, instead of my Instagram feed being full of influencers, it’s full of people who have similar lived experiences to me, and they’re constantly reminding me that I’m not alone.
As a bonus, they create memes about our conditions and symptoms that not only make me laugh, but help me to explain what I’m dealing with to the friends and followers I have who are lucky enough to have healthy bodies and minds.
It’s important to note that fatigue and “feeling tired” are not one and the same. While everyone feels tired after a long week, fatigue is on another level. It’s the kind of exhaustion you have when you have the flu, where you can feel it in your bones. For someone with chronic pain, a bad day can mean needing to lie down for 20 minutes after doing something simple, like taking a shower.
Any person who is open about their struggles with chronic pain has at least five stories of some random person trying to help them by offering them a miracle cure, or asking all the wrong questions, or not understanding the basics of what it’s like to live in a body that is in pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week, forever.
Now, you may think that doctors would be the best friend of anyone suffering with chronic pain, but alas, no. Aside from the fact that there’s still so much that humans don’t understand about the human body – especially when it comes to pain – there’s also the all-too-likely possibility that you’ll get a doctor who doesn’t know a thing about your conditions. Having pain dismissed or not believed is unfortunately something that too many people with chronic pain have had to go through, sometimes multiple times over.
If you also have chronic pain, hopefully memes like these help you to say “same”. And for everyone else, hopefully it’s given you a little insight into our live. Also, please don’t suggest yoga.
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