Really Quite the Juggler

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I occurred to me the other day that I am really quite the juggler when it comes to managing all my chronic illnesses. In fact, I often wonder if I should revise my blog and limit the number of conditions that I choose as the subjects of my blog posts. Then I got an awful nice comment from Katie over at Dear Thyroid suggesting that I should become one of their guest bloggers since I have many conditions in common with their readership (minus the thyroid ones) and I seem to be doing such a good job managing my own multiple illnesses.

Truth is, what you see today in this post is but a snapshot from the travel album that is my life. Yes, welcome to mile marker 22, as in 22 year since I began living life with chronic illness. I've been learning to juggle on and off for the past 22 years, so if I appear to be very good at it, that's only because I've been practicing for such a long time. So compare yourself to me with caution, since I clearly hold an advance degree in this subject matter. At least I hope so, considering how long I have been studying it!

But for those of you new to life with chronic illness, take heart. If I can figure this whole coping with chronic illness mess out, so can you. Keep in mind that this is a process, which means for the most part you work this out as you go along. There really isn't a set time frame or path, per se--it's more like a correspondence course you take at home at your own pace. I find it's a lot of trial and error on your part and smaller parts of learning from others, getting educated through books and trusted websites and receiving advice from your medical providers.

Rest assured, we all are unique and different. So *fingers-crossed* I hope you will not have to deal with as many illnesses as me. I'm sort of special case it seems, as illness is a big theme in my life. Plus all my illnesses didn't happen at once, they came on in waves or stages. That gave me time to adjust to each one, or a couple at most at a time. That lent itself to learning to apply the skills I acquired coping with one illness to the next.

I guess that makes me some kind of "super coper."

Or not.

So in a world of niche patient blogs, I hope what makes my blog unique and special is that I write not so much about my sideshow collection of illnesses but how I learn to juggle them all. In which case, I'm certainly running my own little Circus Amok over here. Perhaps your fascination with me is part amazement that I can juggling so many balls at once and wonder if life throws me yet another ball, will it result in a spectacular dropping of all my balls.

Guess you'll have to stay tuned to see...