Friendly reminder that:
- Young people can have arthritis too.
- There are hundreds of life long conditions and diseases out there that are typically diagnosed between 12 and 30.
- There is a vast difference between being tired and having chronic fatigue.
- Just because you can’t tell that someone is unwell from looking at them, doesn’t mean that you should assume that they are ok.
- Many chronic illnesses are life long, and incurable. Many of them are potentially fatal.
- If you have a disease like Lupus, on good days you still feel like you have a bad flu, 24/7.
- Many of the medications used to treat chronic conditions have side effects that can really affect someone’s self esteem – like extreme weight gain, skin changes and hair loss.
- Most chronic illnesses have very little awareness – its unlikely that you’ve heard of Sjogren’s Syndrome, Scleroderma, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome or Fibromyalgia.
- However these diseases can cause symptoms as varied as joint pain, fatigue, constant nausea, kidney failure, pneumonia, photo sensitivity, full body rashes, paralysis, strokes etc.
- So please remember that invisible illnesses exist too 🙂