Self Care & Chronic Illness: A Pep Talk

Most people think face masks, massages, and fruit water when they think self care. Things such as basic hydration, physical therapy, and taking your medications don't really strike most of us as "self care" at all. Self care should be glamorous right? It should be treating yourself after a rough day, maybe once a week or once a month. That's not the case for those of us with chronic illnesses.

When you're chronically ill, your body requires much more care than the average person. The majority of that care is up to us, the responsibility falls on our shoulders. It's a heavy weight to bear, but a very important one. If we fail to take care of ourselves even for just a day, we deal with things like pain, flares, and all sorts of things that are no fun at all.

It stands to reason that things like taking our meds, taking time for infusions, or flushing our central line would be self care. It doesn't mean that we can't enjoy a lovely face mask or a massage sometimes, but it means that our day to day life is full of constant self care. You could say that we're masters of self care, even.

Try to keep this in mind the next time you find yourself refilling your pill box, or on days when you dread being hooked up to IV saline for hours at a time. You're practicing the art of self care, just like beauty gurus drop thousands on Glamglow masks and Dermalogica exfoliators, we drop thousands on saline, formula, medications, and foods that won't kill us (or maybe just hurt us... a lot). You're like an Instagram guru of healthcare and doing things to keep yourself as functional and comfortable as you can.

In the end, we're all striving for a better quality of life. Whether you're healthy and looking to get into shape, or you're digestive tract is faulty and you're fed intravenously. We all strive to do what we think will make us feel good, and that's the core of what we do when we handle treatments and daunting handfuls of pills.

It's frustrating at times, its expensive and exhausting; but you're doing it. I know it's hard, but you're doing your best for where you are right now. That's what I call being a self care rockstar.

In short, you're awesome in all your frustrating medical glory. You're awesome because you're fighting your hardest to feel as good as you can. You should be extremely proud of yourself.