Invisible Illness Awareness Week

You see that girl in those photos, she looks relativity normal right? She's smiling, laughing and she's out doing things.

She looks healthy, doing things someone her age should - she looks as if shes out living her life, but its what you don't see.

The days that are spent in bed where the pain and fatigue are so bad you can hardly move, the number of different medications she has to take to make it through the day, the endless hospital stays and trips.

There are the days where mentally everything plummets - you're sick of being sick.

This is what you don't see.

You don't see me spending days crying when the pain is so bad, crying to have the next procedure done because of things that have gone wrong before.

You don't see the frustration of doing something fun and then suffering for it. The constant wonders of why? Why couldn't I just have one night of fun without backlash. Why can't I do all the things someone my age can?

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I suffer from a number of different invisible illnesses, most of which have no cure. Nothing can be done to help anymore, I've had everything done that they could do to 'help'.

The illnesses/conditions I suffer from are:

- Neurofribrematosis Type 1

- Scoliosis, Kyphosis ( most of the time it's not seen. I wear lots of baggy clothes to hide the slight bump).

- Chronic Pain

- Chronic Fatigue

- Spinal Cord Injury T5/6 (further issues linked with this)

- Incomplete Paralysis

- Anxiety (Social and General).

- Depression.

A lot of people follow in their minds that because an illness such as one of those and many more aren't visible they aren't real. They don't understand how the basic things are draining or something so small can cause so much pain. But they are real, and the people with illnesses such as this are fighting the effects everyday of their life, they don't get a day off.

Of course we have good days and bad days, one where we could do more than the next but that doesn't mean we're 'cured' or we've been faking. There is no control on when you'll have a good day or bad day, everyday is different.

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Thanks for reading!

- Katie xo

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