Walking in Our Shoes: Understanding Life with Autoimmune Disease

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Imagine never feeling good when you know of no reason not to feel good.

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Imagine feeling pain in multiple areas of your body for no apparent reason.

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Imagine feeling like your verbal and motor skills are impaired when they were fine a minute ago.

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Imagine having a hard time trying to button buttons, zip a zipper, type a letter, or unscrew a bottle.

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Imagine trying to step up on a curb and having sharp pains in your lower back, hips, knees, and feet.

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Imagine being told you are a burden and accused of ruining the lives of those you love.

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Imagine being forgotten about because you cannot do things that your family or friends do.

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Imagine feeling like you have missed sleep for a week when you have just gotten out of bed.

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Imagine having memory loss, stuttering over your words, trying to hide what you really want to say in fear of being made fun of.

 

Imagine something going wrong with your body every day, even when you have done nothing out of the ordinary—take a shower, do laundry, walk down a flight of stairs.

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Imagine having uncontrollable shakes and tremors and shocks of pain run through you and disappear as quickly as they came, leaving you bracing for their return.

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Imagine having to live a normal life in society, yet knowing your symptoms will alter that sense of normalcy at any time of any day.

 

Imagine striving to be the best mother, father, daughter, son, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin, niece, nephew, friend, husband, or wife that you could be and being left to feel like a burden or merely useless, hoping, praying, and wishing you could feel normal again.

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If you can imagine these things, then you have now imagined what it is like for so many of us. We live with chronic, incurable, and often misunderstood illnesses that challenge us every single day.