Related posts:

1. Myasthenia Gravis: A New Diagnosis Knocks Me From My Path When you are living with multiple chronic illnesses things can quickly spiral out of control. ...
2. Patience in the Hospital Though I am a Novel Patient, patience isn't my strong suit.  But patience is what...
3. Happy February 14th! Single Awareness Day (also known as Valentine's Day) is upon us!  Relationships (or the lack...

Related posts:

1. Love Bug Relationships are complicated enough, but adding chronic illnesses into the mix increases complications exponentially. In...
2. Visible Today is the first day of National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week, and it has...
3. Full Disclosure Before I was in a wheelchair and now a walker, my illness was pretty invisible....

Related posts:

1. Being Public with Chronic Illness Since I've been open with my chronic illness, the positives of letting the world take...
2. Progress! I've been home from the hospital for 45 days today I just realized, and I...
3. Myasthenia Gravis: A New Diagnosis Knocks Me From My Path When you are living with multiple chronic illnesses things can quickly spiral out of control. ...

Related posts:

1. Hospital Update I'm scared about tomorrow.  Tomorrow I have to get a feeding tube put in.  But...
2. Sjogren’s Syndrome Awareness Month As the month draws to a close, I am reminded that April is Sjogren's Syndrome...
3. Patience in the Hospital Though I am a Novel Patient, patience isn't my strong suit.  But patience is what...

Related posts:

1. Full Disclosure Before I was in a wheelchair and now a walker, my illness was pretty invisible....
2. 30 Things About My Invisible Illness You May Not Know The illness I live with is:  Sjogren's Syndrome, but I also have Autoimmune Pancreatitis, Autoimmune...
3. Patience in the Hospital Though I am a Novel Patient, patience isn't my strong suit.  But patience is what...

Related posts:

1. Being Public with Chronic Illness Since I've been open with my chronic illness, the positives of letting the world take...
2. Full Disclosure Before I was in a wheelchair and now a walker, my illness was pretty invisible....
3. Love Bug Relationships are complicated enough, but adding chronic illnesses into the mix increases complications exponentially. In...

© Novel Patient for Novel Patient, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: AComplaintFreeWorld, advice, balance, Better, Chronic, Chronic (medicine), chronic pain, competition, Complaining, Conditions and Diseases, cut, feeling, flip side, health, ill friend, loathe, mind, monopoly, Musculoskeletal Disorders, pain, reminder, Support Groups

Being so open with my illness has certainly brought me many blessings.  I’ve had so much vital support especially during difficult times from the people that read this blog.  Sometimes just reading caring comments from people left here have made the world of difference in my ability to get through the day.  My friends and family also have been better able to know what’s going on with me and stay in the loop, so that they can better understand and support me.  I’ve been able to help others by sharing my story and helping people who are going through similar situations not feel so alone.  And I’ve had an outlet for catharsis for myself.

There have also been some downsides.  Sometimes I get unkind and unwelcome comments left here.  Being so open about my illness opens me up to everyone’s opinion on the matter.  I also sometimes have to be careful of what I say because I know that a person I care about in my life will read what I write and I don’t want to hurt them.

But lately I’ve been working really hard to get myself off disability by starting a career in Transmedia.  I went to ARGFest, a conference for Transmedia and Alternate Reality Games, a few weeks ago where I networked and learned a great deal from the panels and speakers.  I had a blast and came back energized to continue pursuing this as a career.  But while I was there I discovered that a lot of people follow my blog, and I started to wonder how that might negatively effect my chances of succeeding in that industry.  Would people not hire me because they had read my blog and knew I was ill?

So that leaves me in sort of a quandary.  This blog is a big part of my life, but I don’t want to give it up, but I also don’t want to sabotage my own career.  So what do you think?  How has being open with your illness been a positive or negative experience for you?  How has it affected your career?  Please leave me a note in the comments!

Here are some photos from my trip to Atlanta, Georgia for ARGFest!

Recent Comments:

• Meditours commented on Scrapaganza Meditours is committed to providing medical treatments of the highest medical standards today by wor
• 68mu79d commented on Fear
• anna y commented on An Update and a Big THANKS!!! you inspire me. i have no idea how i came across your blog… probably through some of my crazy goog
• Kris commented on The Grieving Process of Chronic Illness Thank you for writing this! Today I was looking for support on this topic- I was diagnosed with Myas
• josie commented on Happy February 14th! I drop in on your site once in awhile and often can relate to what you write – especially to this. B

Related posts:

1. Full Disclosure Before I was in a wheelchair and now a walker, my illness was pretty invisible....
2. Keeping The Faith Through my chronic illness, I have come to realize how crucial it is to have...
3. Progress! I've been home from the hospital for 45 days today I just realized, and I...

Related posts:

1. Walk By Faith Sunday was a small miracle in the grand scheme of things but not so small...
2. Keeping The Faith Through my chronic illness, I have come to realize how crucial it is to have...
3. Better Enough? I'm well on my way on the road to recovery. I've been doing more and...

© Novel Patient for Novel Patient, 2010. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ARGFest, Baptized, blessing, blog, Busy, caregiver, Christianity, Chronic, Chronic Illness, Church, church of jesus christ, church of jesus christ of latter day saints, clear liquids, Conference, energy, feeding tube, games, hope, hospital, illness, jesus christ of latter day saints, Latter Day Saints, LDS, life, living my life, pain, patient, picc line, Religion and Spirituality, walk, walker, WALKING

There are two ways to look at everything.  Like dark and light.  Like black and white.  Positive or negative.  There are two ways to view every situation life throws your way.

People often ask me how I maintain such a positive attitude despite all I go through.  I tell them that first of all life is too short to spend being unhappy.  Besides… I have two choices.  I can be sick and miserable or I can be sick and happy.  The choice is mine.  And I chose to be sick and happy!

It’s a sort of double vision as I see it.  There are two ways to look at every situation.  And right now I literally am experiencing double vision.  I am also having extreme difficulty lifting and moving my left leg.

Yesterday I saw a neurologist here in the hospital.  (Yes I am STILL in the hospital – 21st consecutive day and 27th total day.)  And he thinks that one of two things is going on.  Either I have an ongoing chronic probably Autoimmune neurological disease causing this and my other neurological problems.  If this is the case it might be something like Multiple Sclerosis or something similar.  Otherwise I might have had a one time incident a few years ago when I couldn’t move either of my legs for a month that left me with permanent damage.  Either way the infections I’ve been fighting has been exacerbating my symptoms.

While we are trying to figure things out my neurologist gave me an eye patch so that my double vision is reduced by looking out of only one eye.  Now I can see more clearly.  And what I see is this…

I could curl up into a ball and cry about having another serious health problem – a health problem that is effecting not only my vision but my mobility and my cognitive abilities.  Or I can realize that I already have had this problem either way.  Now I’ll finally hopefully have a name to put to it and a way to treat it and make it better and easier to live with!

Looking like a pirate with my eye patch (ARRRRRR), I no longer have double vision.  My vision is clear (despite the fact that it is still a bit blurry even with my glasses).  So I can clearly see that I have a choice in how I view my situation.  And I chose to deal with it with strong faith that things with be okay somehow as long as I choose happiness every time!

Recent Comments:

• Meditours commented on Scrapaganza Meditours is committed to providing medical treatments of the highest medical standards today by wor
• 68mu79d commented on Fear
• anna y commented on An Update and a Big THANKS!!! you inspire me. i have no idea how i came across your blog… probably through some of my crazy goog
• Kris commented on The Grieving Process of Chronic Illness Thank you for writing this! Today I was looking for support on this topic- I was diagnosed with Myas
• josie commented on Happy February 14th! I drop in on your site once in awhile and often can relate to what you write – especially to this. B

Related posts:

1. Patience in the Hospital Though I am a Novel Patient, patience isn't my strong suit.  But patience is what...
2. Dependency Having a chronic illness can rob you of your independence. Suddenly you find yourself dependent...
3. Hospital Update I'm scared about tomorrow.  Tomorrow I have to get a feeding tube put in.  But...

Related posts:

1. Sjogren’s Syndrome Awareness Month April is Sjogren's Syndrome Awareness Month, and since it is currently my main diagnosis I...
2. My Illness By The Numbers 17 The number of diagnoses I've accumulated so far... Sjogren's Syndrome, Autoimmune Pancreatitis, Autoimmune Hepatitis,...
3. Visualizing Symptoms Appearances can be deceiving with a chronic illness.  Looking at a person you usually can't...