If youve ever wondered what it is like living with a chronic illness, allow me to share with you my experience being the spouse of one who lives with excruciating pain on a daily basis, something he tries very hard to hide from everyone, but I am venting tonight because his illness eats away at our precious vacation time every year, and this year is no different. In fact, his chronic illness has depleted 100 hours of sick, vacation, and comp time in the last two months. That would have been a nicely-long family vacation and sadly, he will be spending the holidays working (other than the government paid holidays) because he has no time left. John and I became college sweethearts and married 17 years ago. A year after we were married, John became so ill he lost 50 pounds from his already lean frame and doctor after doctor could not figure out what was making him so sick. Finally after we graduated from USU and moved to Salt Lake City, we found a GI specialist who finally figured out that John suffered from Crohns Disease, an incurable, life-threatening disease that affects the GI tract, basically fighting against ones own body. If youve ever had a kidney stone or been through child labor, the pain is something like that, if not worse. It is covered by the American Disabilities Act, so John cannot be fired, but for people who suffer from these types of illness, they want so badly to get their job done, but physically, they are incapable of doing so because sometimes they are curled up in a ball in pain, unable to move. It is so disheartening to see someone you love dearly suffer from such a devastating illness. Yes, there are treatments, and they are extremely expensive, so we pay up the wazo for IV treatments done at the hospital every other month and a whole pharmacy of meds he takes every day. However, the cost is inconsequential to me. I would pay any amount to cure this disease if I could. I am only venting because some diseases are not visible to the public eye, and there are many, many people out there who are suffering silently, and using vacation time for such illnesses when they would rather be doing something far different.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 04:31:52 +0000
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