Skip to main content

What One Text Can Mean

Being chronically ill in college comes with many obstacles. One of the hardest ones is avoiding normal people illness. Being an education major makes this even harder. I spend lots of time in elementary schools and so do most of my friends do as well. It is safe to say there is always something going around our classes. On top of that no one ever wants to miss a class especially since we are on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule to accommodate our field placements (which I totally get because I hate having to catch up what I miss). This leads to my classmates coming in to class sick all the time. Once one of our professor even came in and told us she had a low grade fever.

For me this is really scary. Let me give you a little history of what has happened to me when I have gotten normal people sich since being chronically ill. In high school one I had a small cold or bug that was only bad for a couple days but then triggered a had joint flare, forcing me to miss multiple days of school (no morning classes for a week), led to needing a completely new med regiment, and back tracked my hip surgery recovery by weeks. A year ago when I had a simple viral infection gastroparesis was triggered and now I have a feeding tube. Yet without knowing this history most of my peers think I am crazy for never leaving my apartment without hand sanitizer and carrying around a travel sized lysol spray and wipes.

Most other college kids do not think twice about coming to class sick and do not realize how it may affect those around them. So last night when I received a text from my friend starting with her saying she had a low grade fever, me being half asleep and not bothering to read the text, assumed she probably was asking me to take notes for her or come over after class to help her catched up. When I woke up this morning and read the whole text I found out she was letting me know because while she could not miss class she wanted me to know to stay away from her (we usually sit next to each other in one class) so I do not get sick.

I do not think she realized how much I appreciated that text. Not only did I avoid a bug but I also saw that she really understood my challenges today.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Preparing to Fly with Complex Medical Issues

One of the most stressful things to do is travelling, now add some needles, medical liquids, and a suppressed immune system to that and flying goes from stressful to down right scary. As I prepare to fly to the rare patient advocacy summit taking place this week in California I  figured I would share what I have found works the best for me when traveling. Before my first flight with a feeding tube I looked up the TSA policies on medical liquids. Basically as long as you notify them while going through security and separate them from the rest of your things you should be allowed to take them through without issue. No doctor's note required. Same goes for needles and syringes and inject-able medications. You may want to print this policy out or have easy access to it on your phone in case you encounter any issues although I have yet to have a problem. A few days before your flight call up TSA cares. They will set you up with a TSA specialist to help you through security. Th...
1 comment
Read more

30 Things You May Not Know About My Invisible Illness

I am doing this post for invisible illness week which is this week.  1. The illness I live with is: Enthesitis, Amplified Musculoskeletal Pain(AMP), and Uveitis 2. I was diagnosed with it in the year: Uveitis-2012, Enthesitis and AMP-2013 3. But I had symptoms since: 2006 4. The biggest adjustment I’ve had to make is: I have had to learn I can't do everything I want or everything that other people my age are doing. 5. Most people assume: I am perfectly fine or I just have osteoarthritis and not an autoimmune disease. 6. The hardest part about mornings are: Getting out of bed, doing my hair, and figuring out what outfit will be the most comfortable for the day (and accommodate any swelling I may have) 7. My favorite medical TV show is: Grey's Anatomy (and Scrubs even if it is no longer on) 8. A gadget I couldn’t live without is: My Freezer 9. The hardest part about nights are: Not being able to fall asleep in a comfortable pos...
5 comments
Read more

The Perfect Body?

Today I am going to write about a taboo subject- body image, and how living with chronic illness/pain has affected it. I get told how great my body is a lot, I am tall and fairly skinny. Not to be egotistic but I look pretty good in a bikini. I should love how I look. I should be confident of my body, after all I just bought a pair of size 2 jeans. Yet I still struggle with loving my body. My New Jeans! In middle school I thought my legs were fat, that was when I had muscles from horseback riding, today I miss my muscular legs. My thighs tend to be two different sizes, the left one is almost always smaller. The reason for this is simple, my left quad has atrophied from months of limping and being on crutches when I was 15/16, at one point it was so bad my doctor measured it and the difference was a good 2 cm in circumference. Today they are almost the same size, and probably look the same to anyone else, but to me they still look different. If you haven't guessed it yet, ...
4 comments
Read more