Tag Archives: brain fog

Dear Doctor, From Your Naked Patient

November 8, 2019 Becky Hill 10 Comments

Dear Doctor,

Perhaps we once met, perhaps we never will.

Regardless of which it is – today I just want us to try and understand one another better. Because if we can TRY to understand one another more, then perhaps we can work together to help your patients find more holistic healing and hopefully make your job a little easier too.

I decided to try and connect with your heart today, because I know that under all those important professional masks, doctor degrees, awards, uniforms, stethoscopes, sometimes fancy clothes and endless medical guidelines….

You are simply human like me.

Today, you might be my doctor and I might be your patient.

But perhaps yesterday, today or tomorrow we will equally face the same or similar challenges in our lives. The kind of personal difficulties and traumas every human faces at times. The types of trials and wrestlings that are simply common to our humanity, and a normal part of our broken world.

Maybe tomorrow you may even face the horrible illness I am facing today. Or perhaps one day you will find that one of your loved ones is in my ‘patient shoes’ – and someone else is in your own ‘doctor shoes’.

So please could we connect as equals – as human to human.

Rather than my inferior condition to your superior position. Or my entitled demanding to your service providing.

Please would you take a moment to humbly listen, as I attempt to open my heart to you today?

First, I need you to know some of my own story for you to understand me better. To know that I have been very unwell for nearly five years now. In January 2015 I fell off a small step ladder and that one moment changed my whole life. And from that moment I was catapulted into a life of constantly being someone’s patient.

… Maybe being your patient.

During that time I have met some wonderful doctors who were able to connect with me, listen, and who tried to help me as much as they could. I appreciate them more than they will ever know.

They were bright lights in immensely dark places.

But most of the time I have met doctors who didn’t really understand. And some who didn’t seem to even want to try. I met many doctors who treated me as another inconvenience in their very busy day. Another form to fill and box to tick. The nameless, faceless puzzle to try and solve that day.

You see dear doctor…

I have a condition that you may not know much about. And even if you think you do know a lot about it, if you spent a couple of hours in my home listening to me and my family you would probably find that you don’t know as much as you think you do about my complex case. Even many ‘top neurology specialists’ don’t truly understand my condition – even though many of them think they do.

And because of that, some of you have unknowingly added to my pain, giving me wound after wound that I am still healing from today.

You see, for the past five years I have been battling a spinal CSF leak. Perhaps you have heard a bit about them. Patients can get them after lumbar punctures, epidural anaesthetic injections or spinal surgery. Recently more doctors are realising that spinal fluid leaks resulting from these procedures are probably more common than previously recognised. The truth about their devastation seems, in the past, to have been hidden – mainly because many doctors only knew of the classic acute PDPH (post dural puncture headache) symptoms; they didn’t know that you can be leaking spinal fluid and not be stuck flat 24/7. It’s possible that you can be upright a lot of the day, but still be very, very ill. Experiencing all sorts of other horrible, debilitating, distressing, rarely recognised and widely misunderstood neurological symptoms.

I acquired my leak from that step ladder fall in January 2015. More of that original story is here if you want to learn. All my scans – until recently – failed to show IH (intracranial hypotension) or evidence of a leak in my spine.

And yet….

Every single day since that ladder fall I have felt exceedingly unwell. I have not had one fully pain free day. I have not experienced a single day when my mind was clear and my brain worked like it used to.

I need you to know – dear doctor – that every day is a struggle for me. I have fluctuated between being bed ridden for months on end, to months of being upright all day.

And everything in between that as well.

But never well. Never normal. Never knowing the health I used to know.

I could never fully explain to you how impossible it has sometimes felt to live like this.

Recently – after more than four years – my UK NHS specialist team think they have located my CSF Leak in my cervical spine, a ventral leak, hidden at the back my dura on new MRIs. We are currently waiting for new scans to be read and reported to confirm and categorise the leak and work out a better way forward.

I was diagnosed with a suspected spinal CSF leak two months after my original fall. For a while they thought it was post-concussion syndrome – until I was finally admitted to hospital after my third trip to A&E. An understanding neurologist finally picked up on the fact my symptoms only went away lying down. Since then I have had 8 separate MRIs, a radionuclide cisternogram and a CT myelogram of my brain and spine. Until recently, they ALL failed to show any evidence of a spinal CSF leak at all.

Can you imagine how hard it is to be so very, very ill, but lack the vital evidence that definitively PROVES to you that I am leaking CSF from my spine?

I know I am as ill, and sometimes even much worse, than some of those who have the scan evidence you want to see. And yet I know that some of you still doubt me, and I know that some of you still don’t think it’s all quite true.

Even though…

Research shows that at least 25% of spinal CSF leak patients don’t show classic signs on their brain MRI. *
Medical papers show that around 50% of patients don’t show the leak on spinal MRIs.*

And yet I still often feel that I have to ‘prove’ to you how ill I really am.

That my lack of evidence is my own curse.

My own fault maybe?

I have been there with you. Lying flat in a hospital bed as you have towered over me, asking question after question, requiring me to prove myself to you. Feeling like I am a criminal standing in your ‘doctors court’.

With you as the ‘appointed judge’ over my medical destiny.

Do you know how deeply you have wounded me?

To be unbelievably and traumatically ill with a ‘apparently rare’ brain condition, and then find I also have to summon up energy (I don’t have) to ‘fight my case’ in your ‘doctors court’.

Challenging me to PROVE how ill I really am.

Do you know what damage that has done to me?

You probably have no idea how much it has affected me these past five years. How much it wears me down. How much it has infected my mental and emotional stability. How much shame I have had to carry.

Simply because in your busy, overwhelming, important – and often under-valued – job, some of you seem to have forgotten that your patients are simply human.

Just like you!

We share a fragile humanity.

I know that to some of you we are simply different diagnoses that come and go. Some more complex than others. Some that don’t quite fit the ‘diagnosis box’ you are trying to force us into. Simply ‘medical cases’ – charts, scans and notes – that walk into your busy world one day…

… never to be seen again.

Do you realise how much it messes with our heads?

The reason I am writing to you today is in the hope that somehow, I can re-connect with your human heart. Maybe – just maybe – we could get better at understanding one another again. So that we don’t have to end up with all of these painful misunderstandings and confrontations, which can sap your energy just as much as mine.

I know as patients we also need to realise that you are only human too.

That you are not ‘miraculous supernatural healers’ that can defy the laws of medicine, physics and nature. You are simply humans, trying your best to help other sick humans heal up and get well. Many of you wish you could do more for us – not less. You are bound up by the ‘system’ that controls you, by ‘modern medicine’ with all its exhausting bureaucracy, targets and restrictions. We know that there are those of you with equally broken hearts who wish you could offer us more than you do.

I am sorry that we sometimes forget that you are human as well. When we get lost in our own vulnerability, shame, pain and confusion and lash out at, and blame, you unfairly. I am sorry when we also fail to treat you with the kindness, compassion and gratitude that you deserve, as you work with systems that often overwhelm you and bring you crashing to your own exhausted knees.

But today, I can only speak from what I know. I can only try and share from the heart of a very broken patient, who knows that things really do need to change.

You are all overworked and overwhelmed in many ways. And yet some of you seem to be more connected to your own humanity than others. Some of you seem to know how to connect with your patients heart to heart. Some of you achieve this despite all the many challenges of your role.

So I want to say thank you. I know that you are the ones listening to me more openly today.

Recently I have been thinking more deeply about what ‘being a patient’ can feel like for us and how to try and help you understand more – dear doctor. Especially for those of us stuck lying completely flat in a hospital bed due to a spinal CSF leak.

But also as A VOICE for your many other patients as I try to explain what it feels like for us to enter your normal vocational world.

You see, for you, the hospital is your workplace. For us, it’s often an immensely distressing place.

We are not normally there by choice, but because we know that there is no other way to get well than to come to you. So when we enter your ‘hospital work place’, we often feel so vulnerable, so confused, so distressed, so exposed, and often in so much pain.

One way to describe it to you is that we feel like we are metaphorically simply naked and exposed for you all to see.

You may not have ever been a deeply vulnerable and distressed patient yourself – so we know it’s hard for you to fully empathise and understand – but if you want to try and understand us better when you come to see us…

Can you take a moment to imagine and picture what it would feel like if it were you lying on that hospital bed, fully naked – so exposed, vulnerable and ashamed – with absolutely nothing to cover you up?

Our own masks, worldly titles, fancy clothes, make up, hairstyles and badges of honour have ALL been snatched or stolen away. So we are subsequently feeling so cold, so messy, so vulnerable, so distressed, so confused and so naked – whilst you are simply getting on with your daily grind in your normal place of work.

Please be kind to us. Please be patient with us. Please listen carefully to us. Please TRY to understand us.

Don’t stand at the foot of the bed and tower over your patient – she feels small already – take a minute, sit down, listen…Try to understand. Realise you will never understand. Try anyway.”
– C. Sebastian*

Dear doctor, we feel small already… please don’t make us feel even smaller.

In our smallness you can often appear so big, so important and so intimidating. You are covered in all your doctor masks, doctor clothes, doctors badges and medals of honour, and talk with your important-sounding ‘doctor speak’.

Sometimes we don’t even understand what you are saying.

Because you are not talking to other doctors; you are talking to your naked patient who already feels so very small and so very stupid lying down in that hospital bed.

Please listen carefully to us before you attack and accuse us of not feeling as ill as we say. Please open your minds to the fact that just because we don’t fit your boxes, it doesn’t mean we are not truly very, very sick.

You are meant to be our healers – not our accusers.

Dear doctor, you should know that after leaving your hospital or doctors office and perhaps never seeing you again, over the past five years I have experienced two intensely excruciating complete mental health collapses. I have also found myself close to those places again and again.

And in those places – normally when I completely relapse physically, I stop sleeping and have no energy to fight anymore – in those places, all of my traumatic memories of encounters with intimidating and insensitive doctors return to me. I picture you as scary ‘doctor-judges in the medical court’, and I don’t have the energy to try and ‘prove myself’ to you again, and face getting my case thrown out with the lack of suitable evidence.

So I want to just give up.

Dear doctor, did you know that in those dark and distressing places my broken and exhausted mind decides that death might be my only way out. The only escape from the constant battles. The only way to end the never-ending fight. The only way to stop having to defend and prove myself again and again to another intimidating ‘doctor-judge.’

Did you know that your insensitive words and actions one day could indirectly contribute to my death?

Do you realise how serious that is?

You see, when my impossible medical journey pushes me to places beyond what I can endure, when my mind packs in and my body breaks down due to the immense stress and strain of daily battling a debilitating and distressing misunderstood neurological illness year after year…

I end up feeling more broken, more vulnerable, more distressed, more naked and smaller and smaller than ever before.

I feel like a worthless and insignificant judged ‘chronically-ill’ nobody. Who just cannot get well. However hard I try.

Dear doctor, I then need you to know that I need you to see me as…
Just another naked and vulnerable human patient…

…. looking for someone to help cover me up. Someone who can put a blanket of compassion, kindness and hope over me so that I won’t feel so very very cold, ashamed and completely overwhelmed from the fight.

You see…

I am your naked patient.

So please understand that in my nakedness, all I can see is all your importance, all your knowledge, all your intimidation, all your doubts about me and my case, all your intelligence and words I don’t always understand.

So you scare me!!!

I can no longer see your equal humanity; I can only see my naked inferiority beside your beautifully adorned superiority.

So dear doctor, please be gentle with me. I am not as strong as you think. My heart has been broken and wounded again and again. Some days I just think I will sink.

All I see is my broken humanity. All I see is my naked vulnerability.

So dear doctor, today I wanted to connect with your heart. I wanted to try and reach you, human to human.

As your equal.

To please ask you…

When I feel that naked, the best way to help me is to remember that underneath all of your adorned and celebrated doctor-robes, you are just a naked human too. You may not feel it so much today… or even tomorrow. You may not really ever understand what I am actually trying to say.

But please try and imagine yourself as that naked patient, lying in that hospital bed. And think about how you can move a little closer to our inflicted lowered level and status; to sit down, to listen, to try and understand…

Whilst realising you can never fully understand.

But please do TRY anyway.

Because one day…

That naked patient…

Might be you!

And then you will want to meet a kind and gentle doctor, who can also relate and connect to your vulnerable and exposed naked humanity.

And I hope that they will try to bring you more holistic healing….
Rather than inflicting wound after wound after wound... that can sometimes be even harder to heal from than the original condition over which you met.

Sent, with heartfelt tears, gratitude and deep respect for your willingness to listen and learn,

From,

Your naked patient

“Don’t stand at the foot of the bed and tower over your patient – she feels small already – take a minute, sit down, listen…Try to understand. Realise you will never understand. Try anyway.” – C. Sebastian
*Quote from this beautifully insightful TED talk on encouraging ‘Narrative Humility’ in the medical profession.
Narrative Humility: Sayantani DasGupta at TEDxSLC youtu.be/gZ3ucjmcZwY

UPDATE: Please note that in August 2020 I was also diagnosed with arachnoiditis as well as a spinal CSF Leak – I now have radiological evidence to support both those diagnosis. To read more about the new diagnosis please see this link.

Here is my new summary video of my whole medical journey as well as footage of my January/ February 2021 adhesive arachnoiditis relapse/ flare and treatment with IV Steroids. To see my daily video diaries from this time please see my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ZkCy9B_IpeaGrXd0CEgow

For more posts about my story of living with a spinal CSF Leak please look at the subject heading on the menu bar above.

Here is a brilliant 2 min animation about Spinal CSF leaks.

For more information about spinal CSF leaks please see the UK charity website at www.csfleak.info or the US charity website at www.spinalcsfleak.org.

*Please see this new May 2018 medical paper about the 10 most common myths and misperceptions about spinal CSF leaks. It is by some of the top world experts in treating this condition. I was told so many of these myths by various neurologists, anaesthetists, radiologists and many other doctors during my lengthy and traumatic nearly 5 year battle with a spinal CSF leak. This kind of misinformation caused many delays, misunderstanding and great distress on my already immensely long winded and difficult medical journey.

*Please also see this other in depth 2018 medical paper about both low and high intracranial pressure syndromes and their similar and different symptoms. It also mentions cross overs with other headache types. When a patient suffers with a spinal CSF leak long term it can cause massive fluctuations in their whole pressure system both whilst suffering from a spinal CSF leak and following treatment. This is why lumbar puncture pressure readings and ICP pressure monitoring can prove an inaccurate disgnostic tool for SIH as this paper refers to as does the 10 myths paper. My initial LP reading was a 7 which was considered ‘evidence’ of low pressure by some doctors and normal by others.

Spinal CSF Leak, Suffering & Grief

Grappling with the Shame of Having a Rare Invisible illness

April 25, 2017 Becky Hill 9 Comments

“Shame is a soul eating emotion.” – C.G Jung

In 2016, over a period of a few months, I came to realise how much shame I was carrying because I was still unwell, over 20 months, after a ladder fall left me with a debilitating spinal fluid (CSF) leak, somewhere in my spine. I write more about that journey of learning about shame and the devastation it can bring in this post ‘The Shame of Chronic Illness and Pain.”

It was a journey of realisation and revelation following researching and contemplating what SHAME actually is and how damaging it can be in our lives. I was inspired to think about shame following reading Brene Brown’s book ”Daring Greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent and lead.’ The book encourages us to find the courage to be honest and vulnerable about who we REALLY are. It also talks a lot about shame and how destructive it can be in our lives and relationships.

“Shame derives its power from being unspeakable…. If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we’ve basically cut it off at the knees. Shame hates having words wrapped around it. If we speak shame, it begins to whither.” – Brene Brown

Reading the above words inspired me to write publicly about my realisation that I was carrying a lot of shame about the fact I was STILL very unwell. This had been made so much worse by the many battles to get properly diagnosed and then treated. Which many who have rare illnesses/ diseases can face. That includes many of us suffering from CSF leaks whether caused by an accident, purely spontaneous, from a labour epidural, C-Section spinal, a lumbar puncture or other medical procedures such as spinal surgery.

Many of us have faced doctors who have disbelieved us, or at least, disbelieved how bad our symptoms and pain are. We have been on a journey of misdiagnosis and seeing various different medical professionals, until finally finding doctors who understand and can help us. (When you do finally find those doctors they are valued, appreciated and loved more than they will ever know.)

And it’s simply because many doctors do not know much about CSF leaks. In the end, when we do get diagnosed, we are often told how ‘RARE’ we are. Although recently, it is becoming clearer that we are not actually as rare as people once thought – just commonly misdiagnosed, or even ignored, in the past.

Fighting to be heard when you are so very unwell is utterly exhausting and often completely overwhelming. Fighting your case when you are healthy is hard enough. But fighting when you are sick can be an utterly demoralising, shame filled, journey that can leave you with a potentially deeply dark despair. Especially when you are no longer confident that ANY Doctor will really listen and learn, what they need to, to help you.

Shame is that feeling of ‘I am not enough’ or ‘I am not good enough’. You can feel like a failure – not necessarily because of something you have done wrong, but because of who you are, or because of the circumstances you find yourself in, often due to no fault of your own. Sometimes simply because you have a medical condition, or something in your life, that most people just do not, or even refuse, to understand. You feel embarrassed, ashamed and humiliated and can then wonder if there is something really wrong with you as a WHOLE person. You think ‘perhaps I am just not ‘good enough’ or ‘strong enough‘ to do this, why can’t I ‘be and do better’ than I am doing… why do they not understand and listen?’

…. and SHAME begins to relentlessly and often unknowingly eat away at you!

Shame really messes with your mind and emotions and brings a whole spectrum of reactions from – hiding away from other people and getting lost in your own failures and problems – at one end – to getting angry, blaming others and lashing out, for the feelings you have – at the other. And often then trying to cover up your shame by pretending and putting up a front – in between it all. Sometimes we deflect the shame by blaming someone else. But often the fact is, whether or not someone else has directly or indirectly added to or even caused your shame, the soul destroying emotion of shame is still owned by us and we are the ONLY ones who can truly face it and deal with it.

Whilst we simply blame others for it, we won’t be able to get free.

I really do believe many chronically ill people, particularly those with a rare condition or invisible illness, can carry a lot of SHAME from their difficult journey to be heard, supported and helped.

Shame…… that we are ill in the first place and can’t ‘overcome it’. Like other people can with ‘normal’ or less severe illness, and sometimes even more severe cases that can be more easily fixed or treated.

Shame…… when you know the doctors AND even sometimes members of your own family and friends are wondering if it’s ALL or at least PARTIALLY ‘in your head’. When the reality is your body is not actually functioning anything like how it should.

Shame….. that however much you try to engage with life, and ‘push through the pain’, you are still so exhausted by it. It daily feels like you are running a marathon after being whacked round the back of your head with a baseball bat. But you are also very conscious that you do not want to keep sounding like you are complaining and being negative. So you try to smile and chat ….so in reality many people often do not know or really understand how unwell you actually are. Until you have to leave and retreat due to the immense pain and inability to cope with the trauma in your head and body, so as to HAVE to get back to relief of lying flat again.

Shame…. that even when you ‘look well’ in reality nothing has really changed since last month when you ‘looked well’ for those couple of hours, or so, you managed to be ‘upright’ and out, or with others at home (even though in reality most of that time your body was actually screaming at you to get flat again so your brain could get back into its right position in your skull).

Shame….. when tests and scans come back negative and do not correspond with how severe your symptoms are. So you lack the clear, non subjective, medical evidence you need to ‘PROVE’ to others how unwell you are. (Although even having evidence does not necessarily always help and does not always correspond with how bad your symptoms are anyway).

Shame.… when someone asks you how the ‘headache’ is and you really want to scream at them “it’s not just a headache!!! Please stop just calling it ‘a headache’!! It’s a complex and debilitating set of neurological symptoms, pain and a feeling of trauma throughout your whole body which gets increasingly worse when I am upright until I cannot cope anymore.”…. But you instead calmly reply ‘yes, it’s still there!!’ (And has been for over two years …. every day…. most of the day…..when I am actually able to be upright).

Shame.… for the daily feeling that your life is currently so ‘small and insignificant’ because you can’t DO very much anymore. So you no longer feel like a fully functioning member of society. And can’t even fathom what a day with no pain and symptoms feels like any more.

Shame…. that you have to spend so much time in bed, because with spinal CSF leaks the only time you feel fully well is lying FLAT IN BED. (But it’s out of necessity – NOT a relaxing lie in… at times my bed can feel more like a prison than a retreat).

And the shame can pile up….

….shame….
upon shame.….
upon shame …… upon shame!!!

After every new appointment, after seeing ANOTHER doctor who doesn’t understand, after every test that comes back clear, after every social event you have to miss, after every month you can no longer work.

…and after…

Every person you have to tell every day, every week, every month, every year that you are STILL not well and there is still no clear end in sight!

I found so much freedom from that shame over the last year. But sometimes something new brings it back to the surface. It creeps back up on me again and attempts to sink it’s toxic claws into my thinking and emotions. I then realise I still have some underlying shame there …. or at least it’s destructive sticky residue is lingering and refusing to leave.

So as Brene Brown advises, I am again choosing to speak it out in this new post. And to say to others – “I feel your shame too, I feel the exhaustion of the fight, I feel the anguish that the nightmare seems to never end and the chaos it’s brought in your family and relationships.”

Every time I read about another suffering soul facing ANOTHER exhausting battle to be heard – I feel that despair with you!! I have been there, I have walked, and still walk, that never ending road of endurance. An endurance you are not always sure you will still have the strength for tomorrow.

A road I did not choose myself, but wake up to every morning – with no other option than to get up and face another unbelievably exhausting day of trying to LIVE LIFE with relentless debilitating neurological pain and stiffness (head and spine), brain fog, mental and cognitive fatigue and impairment, body and limb weakness, vision issues, tremor, shaking and much much more. And have to dig deep daily to CHOOSE calmness, kindness, thankfulness, love and hope DESPITE it all!

Which is not easy!!

I have also known the darkest of nights when you convince yourself that escaping life itself must be better than living it like this…. and then ALSO then felt the shame of being the one who ‘couldn’t cope anymore’ and was now mentally unwell too. The one who couldn’t endure how she hoped she might. The one who fell apart when she reached the end of herself after a year of health battles and disappointments.

And that is why I know, although I am only one voice, I am one voice speaking for many!! Speaking up is ONE of the things I can still do. So I hope as I say it this way – we can also become many voices united as one.

To remind people (especially doubting medical professionals and doubting family and friends) that until you have walked our path and we have walked yours – we have no REAL idea how hard the other person’s journey has really been and is.

So please don’t assume you know! And we will try our best to do the same for you!

Just because my case is ‘unusual’ and you don’t understand it. Just because my physical condition pushed me over the edge mentally. It doesn’t mean that it is mainly psychological and that I do not have a complex medical condition that leaves my body utterly debilitated. If you lived in MY body for a day – you would soon find that I do not have a simple ‘headache’ like the headaches you have probably known that go away with a couple of pills or a good nights sleep!!

We just ask that you PLEASE listen and allow your mind to be opened, rather than try and force us into the boxes of your limited understanding and experience. I do not expect you to know what you don’t know. But I would appreciate it, if you could just listen and try to understand, and humbly realise that you perhaps do not know as much as you think you do about what is wrong with MY body.

Because….

Until you have watched your health being ruthlessly stolen from you overnight – with no clear assurance of getting it back any time soon. Until you have known the agony of mis-diagnosis and constant questioning from medical professionals unsure of what to do with you, in part, due to a lack of knowledge about your ‘rare’ invisible condition and subjective pain scales. Or worse – until you yourself have faced being ‘interrogated’ by disbelieving, and defensive, medical professionals who think they know – what in reality they obviously don’t. (We are so very very grateful to those who acknowledge what they don’t know and do choose to listen and learn with true humility regardless.)

You do not really know what it is like!

But when you do ‘get it’ or at least try to, then you are welcomed into a new family of others who do KNOW! Who have lived through the devastation of a rare debilitating invisible illness and walked a similar path either personally or alongside their loved ones, close friends or with many of their patients.

When your eyes, ears and hearts are opened and you meet others who have faced a similar pain and carried a similar shame – you know you are not alone! It gives you more fuel for the fight because the battle is no longer JUST YOURS. You are ALSO fighting on behalf of the MANY. Those walking with you AND those coming behind you.

So today I again choose to throw off my shame by SPEAKING IT OUT – so that I can take another’s hand. And say…. “yes this journey is so very tough…. yes the battle often seems relentless….yes we can’t be sure what the future will bring… and yes you will often wonder how you will ever endure the never ending storm.”

But we can fight TOGETHER!!

Some days I struggle to find the strength to fight for just ‘me’! But it’s then I must remember – it’s not just me I fight for!! I fight for you, your family member or loved one. I fight for the person, family member and loved one who will come behind me.

I fight with, and for, all those who know the relentless exhaustion of battling a rare or chronic invisible illness and pain.

WE also fight with, and for those of you, facing any challenge in life that feels beyond you at the moment. Because WE know what it is to have to choose to keep on going, and keep on living, when some days WE just really want to give up and escape it all.

So will you join our fight of many TOGETHER?

Because it’s then… That I find I can dig EVEN deeper. Deeper than I have ever gone before. To find the strength to endure OUR storm TOGETHER!

Because this life shouldn’t just be ALL about ME and MY struggles and pain. It’s about US finding a way to navigate through and endure the ups and downs of life together – as equal broken specimens of humanity. So that on the days I feel like I am falling back into a pit of despair, when EVERY part of my debilitated body screams at me to give up the fight. I know there is someone else who can reach down and grab my hand as I start to fall – offering empathy, love, compassion and strength – whilst also helping to pull me back up to face another day. Then tomorrow it might be my day to reach down to you, as you fall, and help pull you back up to face another day too.

And that way we will break away from the shame that tries to chain us up! AND dig deep to ENDURE the tough times TOGETHER!

Life is ALWAYS better when we face it TOGETHER!

“Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. ….. A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.” – The Bible (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10,12)

Do you feel that shame? We all carry shame in some form. Please do comment below – if we can speak it out then perhaps TOGETHER we can beat it!