We are the heroes

I had a moment today. I was working on organizing an upcoming event I'm in charge of and I took a break to make some bread before I went to pick up my son from school. There I was making bread even though my hands were swollen and my legs were killing me and I thought "damn, I'm awesome!" Seriously, it suddenly struck me that I get a lot of stuff done considering I can barely move my hands and I'm in more pain on a daily basis than most people experience in a lifetime.  And yet look at all the things that I get done!

- I take care of two young children and a husband
- I have a mildly clean house thanks to mostly my own efforts and despite the efforts of the other three members of my family
- I cook from scratch almost every day
- I volunteer at my church every week
- I volunteer for the Texas Lyme Disease Association
- I maintain a blog that while not award winning involves a lot of thought and preparation
- I interact with people from the chronic illness community on a daily basis

It's not a career or anything like I planned, but I actually do a lot of stuff.

This epiphany I had today made me realize us chronic sickies don't give ourselves enough credit. The fact is that it takes enormous courage for us to get out of bed every day. It takes courage to wake up and knowing how much it's going to hurt, get out of bed and interact with the world. We truly are awesome! You won't see many of us in the newspaper being hailed as heroes, but we are. It takes a lot of courage to be us and to keep on going. It would be a lot easier to lay in bed and give up. We won't be presidents or CEOs or award winning athletes. but we are the real heroes. The heroes who have faced the unthinkable and lived to tell the tale. Not only have we lived but we've gone on and reconstructed our lives and developed new talents and skills because of our illness. We didn't just lay down and say "poor pitiful me" we fought a battle. We fought to get diagnosed and we fought to get treatment and we still fight today to live with the pain and for  better understanding of our illnesses. We really are awesome.