#copingwithinvisibleillness

I'll get right on that!

Please don’t allow yourself to be judged by others who don’t understand your struggle.  It took me a long time not to define myself by how others see me.  I now see my strength, my accomplishments, and I am proud of what I have done with my life.  I don’t feel that I have accomplished a lot in spite of my disability, I have simply accomplished a lot. Don’t let someone else’s ignorance define how you feel about yourself.  We all have the right to be proud of the things we are able to do because we are the only ones who truly understand the strength it took to do them.

After today this has never meant more to me.

I am going in for surgery in the next couple of weeks and my previous surgeon moved out of state and I am using someone new.  I met with him for the first time a couple of weeks ago and explained to him that this is my biggest surgery to date, I am having a spinal cord stimulator taken out and a morphine pump put in, about 350 stiches.  I asked him if I could stay 1 or 2 nights in the hospital.  He told me that he has never had a patient stay overnight, that there was no medical reason for me to.  The old me would have said ok and gone home in terrible pain, the new me stood my ground and told him that I was staying at least one night maybe two.  I am no glutton for punishment and I don’t care what someone else can do, I know my body and I know what I can handle and what I can’t.  As long as my insurance will pay for it and they will, what difference does it make?  I told him if he needed a medical justification for me to stay, try PAIN MANAGEMENT.  After all his medical practice is named pain and health management, say it-learn it – live it.

I'm still waiting.