#NHBPM – Extended comment.

Selena wrote a guest post about The Illness Picture at ChronicBabe the other day. While I wrote an immediate response over there, it has stuck with me and prompted a longer response for today’s NHBPM – 30 health posts in 30 days.

What would my illness picture look like? How would I begin? How would I arrive at today?

What came first is clear – anxiety and depression. Did type 2 diabetes and hypothyroidism come next, hand in hand, slowly progressing with borderline blood tests – or were they separate beasts? The chronic pelvic pain, now seemingly resolved, showed up independently – and yet it deepened anxiety and depression as I allowed myself to believe it was all in my head.

It is a necessary exercise to connect the dots (or disconnect the dots?). It is one I hope to complete sooner rather than later, because as you write, one should be in a good place with one’s chronic health issues. And right now, I feel I am.

You are right, Selena, all of us are extraordinary if we look at The Illness Picture. Not as a tool of discouragement, but as a measure of strength. (But would we be as strong without these experiences with chronic illness? Something to ponder…)