Chronically ill crafts

My Life With Chronic Illness.

Hello my name is sophie and I have lived with chronic illness since 2009. When I was thirteen my journey of living with chronic illness began, after 3 months straight in bed, not being able to get up or do anything. After multiple doctors appointments and being told i was just depressed.. then being told it was glandular fever.. then when all the bloods came back clear they decided on the diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome. After some time i learnt to control and manage my chronic fatigue and it then just came in flare ups. I then got on with living a normal..ish life.

Despite the chronic fatigue i managed my health and lifestyle quite well until i was about sixteen and i started getting low back pains, nothing to server but it was uncomfortable, gradually this got worse which led to me needing a MRI, which gave us the news we dreaded, my L5/S1 disk was protruding inwards toward my spinal cord, this is something we latter on discovered was inherited from my mother who had very severe back problems in the same area.

It’s been a very long road of being passed from pillar to post. going from one surgeon to the next, from one specialist to the next.. no one really seemed all that bothered about helping me, every-time i saw someone new they just put me on another pill. Overall I have been seen by, The Orthopaedic Team, The Spinal Surgeons, Rheumatologist, The Chronic Pain Team, The Community Pain Team, Vascular Surgeons , Physiotherapist, Osteopath, Neurologist, Dermatologist, Gastroncologist... and a few of these departments discharged me said they couldn't help me and sent me to a different consultant! surgically they have tried epidurals, steroid injections into the spinal canal, nerve root block, discography, singular nerve block (twice) all of which had no benefit for me at all. When it comes to medication the is to many to even list that i have been on but i am now on high doses of the strongest pain killers.

For years I was told I shouldn't be in as much pain as I am, that not all the symptoms where part of the diagnosis... no one would look into these symptoms and it was left. In 2017 I saw a chronic pain specialist who took note of every symptom I mentioned and every area I was and felt in pain, he had an idea what the added symptoms could be but wanted to be 100%. He sent me to see a rheumatologist who confirmed his thought. I was diagnosed with hypermobility and fibromyalgia, which is a chronic pain condition that affects your entire body.

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