Monthly Chronic Illness Writing Prompts. Why I stay!

Each month I like to join in with Sheryl’s writing prompts. She gives the prompts and then I have to write about each of them and how they apply to my life. This month I’m really thinking about why I stay.

The prompts this month are

1. STAYING
2. DOING
3. BEING
4. TARGETING
5. WEIGHING

Staying – Why I Stay

So much of the time, especially in the recent months, I’m thinking why I stay. Yes, I mean why I stay alive, why I stay here on this planet, why I stay here in this house, this home. A lot of the time I don’t want to stay, I want to be anywhere but here.

My family drive me nuts, my illness drives me nuts, my daily routine drives me nuts. My work, my words, my life, waking up in the morning, going to bed at night, it all drives me insane. I so often don’t want to do it anymore.

But then I think again. We only have one shot at this life and so far I’ve been through a lot. But that’s my life and that’s the one I was given. Yes, I could have been given a life of luxury with a nice house, plenty of money and lots of holidays. I could have been given a life in war torn Syria. But I wasn’t, I was given this rather ordinary life in England. Which got messed up along the way, but it’s still my life.

And I still have things I can be proud of. Especially my children. And that’s why I stay.

Doing

What will I be doing this month? Well, we are currently in the process of having our family bathroom turned into a wet room. That means an accessible shower for me. So, although I won’t be doing the work myself, I’m coping with the workmen every day disrupting my daytime routine. (You know, the one I’m sick of!)

Then I’ll be helping my husband re-arrange our bedroom in preparation for my lift. He’ll be doing all the hard work, but I really need a huge purge, so I’ll be telling him what has to go. (including two bookshelves full of books.)

Being

I guess I’m being me. My usual moany but unable to ask for help self me. My hope is that I can be different. I feel as though I have learned so much recently. I have done a lot of studying and reading and learning, but the last couple of years I’ve become so much more aware of people. I’m not so sure I like people very much which is strange seeing as I have a degree in psychology. You would think I understood how people behaved, but trust me, it’s takes more than a psychology degree to understand people. So, I’ve decided that I have to start really being who I am and forgetting about what other people think of me. So watch out for me being different. Although, I may just appear to be the same. Some things I refuse to change.

Targeting

What am I targeting this month? Well, I guess it has to be my health. I’ve been reading through my consultant’s letters and something clicked in how my health has changed over the past few years.

There are two things I need to target. My mental health, which I’m already working on with a counsellor, but I also need to work on more pain management. I thought I was pretty good at mindfulness and mind over matter, but it turns out that, yet again, I have much to learn. I will be focusing on this a lot over the next month (And forever.)

The other thing is my weight, or more specifically, my diet. I have learnt that specific things trigger me, too much, or too little sugar can have an adverse affect on my health. Also, my stomach suffers after eating certain foods so I really need to avoid or find alternatives for bread, milk, some fruits and coffee. There are probably a few more things I need to add to list, but it’s not so simple as following a specific diet, this has to be ‘my’ diet. I do need to lose weight too. Before I got sick I used to fret about being 7 lb overweight, now I’m more like 28 lb overweight and it’s hard to shift being so immobile. I barely eat anything as it is so it’s going to be hard to shift, but I’m sure it will make me feel better.

Most of the weight I put on after having high doses of steroids. Not everyone is the same, but after the first dose of IV steroids I put on a few extra pounds. Then a year later I was given a second dose of IV steroids followed by six months worth of them titering them down each week so I didn’t stop suddenly. This dose caused me to put on most of my weight and also destroyed three of my teeth. (My dentist said that steroids do not affect teeth, but after talking to others I found out its quite common.)

Weighing

I’ve just confessed about my weight gain and how I need to change it, so now I’ll talk about something else.

I’ve been weighing up my life in general and working out the things that have the biggest effect on my health. As I’ve already stated I’ve identified these as mental, food and weight.

Overall, my current quality of life isn’t good but after weighing everything up I am coming up with plans for improvement. My home will be improved to help my ability to cope, my mental health is having a real good spring clean, and my physical health will hopefully improve too.

For four years I’ve been looking for a cure, and came to the conclusion that there wasn’t one. But after weighing it all up, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I can get better, or at least improve a little.

I started this post by talking about how I have been so close to ending it all, but as you can, my positivity has won over and I am already working on how to make life better. I lost faith in myself and in humanity, but my cup never fully emptied and I know I can fill it up again.

Thanks for reading and if you’d like to see how other’s have interpreted these writing prompts then please click the image below.

My Writing Prompts for February