Humans of ME/CFS
I am 24 years old, unable to work, and live at home with my parents.
I started showing symptoms of disease around the age of 5. Fatigue and pain have always been my top complaints, and the two issues that no medicine has ever helped alleviate. Of course, I have at least a hundred symptoms other than those two, but I would take them all if I could just have a day with no pain or fatigue.
Over the years I have gradually worsened and I seem to get a new illness each year to add to the pile of diseases. I am mainly bedridden for a majority of my days and have been for years now. I am always resting but getting no rest, never feeling refreshed. Trying to charge batteries that won’t charge. I have thought about suicide more times than I ever could count due to these issues. I live a very isolated lonely life, as most sufferers do. I’ve come too far to go out like that though. I could never do that to my family/loved ones. They’ve given their whole lives to me, and I will continue to do the same for them.
Sometimes it feels as if my body is shutting down on me. I think about going to the emergency room, not even able to make it to the car if I decide to go. I rarely decide to anyway, because every time I ever have gone for my invisible illnesses, they have never once been able to help me in any way. I think there is one worse thing than actually dying, and that is feeling like you’re dying repeatedly—just to live through it again and again.
My family has it much worse than I do. I can’t imagine watching a loved one suffer as much as my family has had to watch me. I am a financial burden as well as an emotional burden to them, although none of them would ever admit it or even think it for that matter. And that’s why despite these hands I have been dealt, I am still one of the luckiest people I know. I go to bed thanking God for each and every day and I feel blessed inside and out because I have people who love me an abundant amount. If I never find medicine that works, if there never is a cure, if I suffer until I’m 90 years old…I can still die happy and fulfilled because I have been blessed with angels in my life and not everybody can say that.