Sharing Chronic Illness Stories
Sharing your story when you have a chronic illness with people who have similar experiences is a wonderful experience — in the sense that you build community together. I recently had this experience while attending a professional development class; here, I had the opportunity to connect with 2 new contacts who have chronic illnesses like RA.
I found it so important for me to be able to connect with these individuals and share our stories together in our course that I thought I would share that experience here to provide context for the importance of building community when you have RA.
Big cities can be exhausting
First, the professional development course was a week long in New York City. Already, that is enough to inspire some feelings of fatigue and pain; NYC is a big and exhausting city (lots of walking and loud noises that often overwhelm me). Additionally, as a few contributors have noted, NYC is not the most accessible city, so there are times when elevators are out in the subway or when getting to the right subway platform takes 3 flights of stairs when you've already walked 27,000 steps in a day.
This was something that my friends and I discussed at this course. All the walking compounded how our joints felt and the amount of work we already had to complete as part of the course. It was helpful to hear other people think and say similar things to what I was feeling; that my body was in pain and I wasn't alone.
It helps to share the pain with others
Throughout the week, the fatigue and pain only got worse. By the end of the week, many of us — including those without chronic illnesses — were exhausted. There's only so many seminars, trips to private collections, and walking you can do in a day. And that's with ibuprofen!
But, what I found in this course was that sharing these pains and feelings with other people in the course helped me connect with them; and, in turn, these friends shared their experiences with me. We were able to create a support group for each other and help each other.
Strength in numbers when self-advocating
Part of developing this support group meant we were able to advocate for ourselves when any course activity was too intense or when we needed to rest.
While the rest of the class continued onto different tasks, my friends and I were able to talk with our professor and find alternative assignments that didn't involve walking around the city more than we had to. We appreciated the flexibility that our professor afforded us; we also found the importance of strength in numbers in advocating for our pain and how we were feeling.
Breaking down barriers to connection
When you have RA, you have to support your fellow chronic illness survivors. This is why I felt it was important to talk about and share my stories of having RA; it was a way to easily break down barriers and connect with others in the class.
To me, this is the importance of sharing stories together about having a chronic illness.
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