If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll probably know that I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome a few years back. I finally declared myself well in March 2009 – my doctor took a bit longer to do so!<\/p>\n
Lying in bed this morning, I realised that we’re now in March 2011. That means I’ve been well again for 2 years. Wow!<\/p>\n
In the nine months that I was sick, and in the time afterwards where I processed my experience (and this still continues to this day), I learnt a few things. I learnt what it is to be sick – really sick – with no way of knowing how long its going to go on, or even if it will end. I have more of an understanding of long-term illness that I ever expected or wanted to have. But I am better for it.<\/p>\n
I learnt to value good health. It really is something that most of us take for granted until we don’t have it anymore. I also learnt that I can make all the plans I want, but there’s no guarantee that those plans will come to fruition. Sure, I’ll make plans, but now I’m much more realistic about the fact that I have no control over these things really. There are many more things that I learnt, about caring, about carers, and about learning to accept help from others. <\/p>\n
I am naturally a “doing” sort of person, but when I was sick, I couldn’t “do” anything. It meant that I had to rethink what it meant to be me. As an achievement based person, who was unable to achieve much at all, I realised that maybe I needed to find another way to think about myself. I thought through the idea that perhaps it was about me just “being”. Even if I couldn’t do, I could “be”. I could choose to “be” a bitter person lying on that lounge, constantly bemoaning my situation, or I could try to “be” a person who people wanted to spend time with, who despite my illness was a loving and kind person. I’m not saying I succeeded in that, as I am still very much a doer, but it did help me to see that “doing” should not be the whole story.<\/p>\n
While it was a horrible time in my life (and my whole family’s) I hope I made the best of it.<\/p>\n
If you’re long term ill, I sincerely hope that today is a good day for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll probably know that I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome a few years back. I finally declared myself well in March 2009 – my doctor took a bit longer to do so!<\/p>\n
Lying in bed this morning, I realised that we’re now in March 2011. That means […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-white-threads-uncategorized","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3155"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9067,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155\/revisions\/9067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}