Monday, May 17, 2010

You don’t look sick. . .

I have mentioned this before. Whatever the cause of your own PTS, or NA, or HNA, or whatever of the many names this goes by you choose to use, you may not have any outward appearance that you have anything abnormal going on. This can be a problem going to see doctors because they may not really believe you when you tell them how you feel. At least they should take the time to look at you and see that there are actual physical things related to PTS that can be seen that are not right and indications of an overall problem.

Your friends and associates may be harder to convince or deal with. And, maybe you do not want them to think of you as having issues, so you try not to show them how this impacts you. You try to do things that you know you have problems with. Sometimes you fail, and they do see just what the toll of PTS is on you both physically and emotionally. Recently one such occasions lead to a meltdown for me, and a “I had no idea” from a person very close to me who I had thought understood my limitations.

She had told me long ago that I hide the physical limitations of this syndrome very well and maybe that is one reason doctors tend to think I am better off than I am. I am not trying to hide anything. I guess I take it for granted though that someone close to me can always tell when I am pushing beyond what I should be trying to do.

The truth is that PTS/NA is never far from my thoughts in everyday life. Everything I do every day is a reminder of what I have lost, or have had to make adaptations to in an attempt to appear “not sick”. It is true this may not life threatening illness, but it still is not easy to deal with at times. It can be rough on you when you are not able to do everyday things that others take for granted. This can be as simple as not being able to write more than a few words legibly to doing simple chores around the house. Because you can do these things, others can forget you have had to adapt yourself to be able to do them.

If you know someone who is working through this, be understanding.

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