Chronic Illness Quotes

“Mental illness

People assume you aren’t sick
unless they see the sickness on your skin
like scars forming a map of all the ways you’re hurting.

My heart is a prison of Have you tried?s
Have you tried exercising? Have you tried eating better?
Have you tried not being sad, not being sick?
Have you tried being more like me?
Have you tried shutting up?

Yes, I have tried. Yes, I am still trying,
and yes, I am still sick.

Sometimes monsters are invisible, and
sometimes demons attack you from the inside.
Just because you cannot see the claws and the teeth
does not mean they aren’t ripping through me.
Pain does not need to be seen to be felt.

Telling me there is no problem
won’t solve the problem.

This is not how miracles are born.
This is not how sickness works.”
― Emm Roy, The First Step

“The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.”
― Joseph Conrad

“She has fought many wars, most internal. The ones that you battle alone, for this, she is remarkable. She is a survivor.”
― Nikki Rowe

“Miraculously recover or die. That's the extent of our cultural bandwidth for chronic illness.”
― S. Kelley Harrell

“We would not be able to impact future generations if family was not one of our top priorities.”
― Gregory S. Works, Triumph: Life on the Other Side of Trials, Transplants, Transition and Transformation

“God has been there with us every step of the way.”
― Gregory S. Works, Triumph: Life on the Other Side of Trials, Transplants, Transition and Transformation

“I encourage readers recovering from a kidney transplant to heed the advice of their medical practitioners.”
― Gregory S. Works, Triumph: Life on the Other Side of Trials, Transplants, Transition and Transformation

“Having a chronic illness, Molly thought, was like being invaded. Her grandmother back in Michigan used to tell about the day one of their cows got loose and wandered into the parlor, and the awful time they had getting her out. That was exactly what Molly's arthritis was like: as if some big old cow had got into her house and wouldn't go away. It just sat there, taking up space in her life and making everything more difficult, mooing loudly from time to time and making cow pies, and all she could do really was edge around it and put up with it.

When other people first became aware of the cow, they expressed concern and anxiety. They suggested strategies for getting the animal out of Molly's parlor: remedies and doctors and procedures, some mainstream and some New Age. They related anecdotes of friends who had removed their own cows in one way or another. But after a while they had exhausted their suggestions. Then they usually began to pretend that the cow wasn't there, and they preferred for Molly to go along with the pretense.”
― Alison Lurie, The Last Resort

“I often wished that more people understood the invisible side of things. Even the people who seemed to understand, didn't really.”
― Jennifer Starzec, Determination

“If I only could explain
How much I miss
that precious moment
when I was free
from the shackles of chronic pain.”
― Jenni Johanna Toivonen

“People who don't see you every day have a hard time understanding how on some days--good days--you can run three miles, but can barely walk across the parking lot on other days,' [my mom] said quietly.”
― Jennifer Starzec, Determination

“That’s the point. This healthy-feeling time now just feels like a tease. Like I’m in this holding pattern, flying in smooth circles within sight of the airport, in super-comfortable first class. But I can’t enjoy the in-flight movie or free chocolate chip cookies because I know that before the airport is able to make room for us, the plane is going to run out of fuel, and we’re going to crash-land into a fiery, agonizing death.”
― Jessica Verdi, My Life After Now

“You spend a lot of time thinking about how awful the prison is rather than envisioning your future.”
― Piper Kerman

“Surrender is an incredibly difficult topic in light of chronic illness, because loss is often continued and sustained.”
― Cindee Snider Re, Finding Purpose: Rediscovering Meaning in a Life with Chronic Illness

“Courage wasn't only fighting your circumstances; sometimes making peace with your circumstances required more courage.”
― Sonali Dev, A Distant Heart

“It got worse still as time went on because people did not sympathize with you any more. They couldn't do enough for you at first, and that helped, and then they got bored with your troubles. But your troubles went on just the same and you had to bear them alone.”
― Elizabeth Goudge, The Scent of Water

“Because doctors can’t name the illness, everyone—the patient's family, friends, health insurance, and in many cases the patient—comes to think of the patient as not really sick and not really suffering. What the patient comes to require in these circumstances, in the absence of help, are facts—tests and studies that show that they might “in fact” have something.”
― Joseph Dumit

“Over the years I have developed and employed a variety of such coping mechanisms, mostly focusing around a philosophy I call, “Live Because.”

“Live Because” is in contrast to what I’ve termed “Live Despite,” which is the idea that people can live rich, full lives in spite of their physical or emotional barriers. “Live Because” takes this a step further by suggesting that in many cases, patients can live a more fulfilling life with their illness than they could ever have done without it.

Ehlers-Danlos syndrome has transformed me from a frequently petty and self-absorbed person into the person I am today (still somewhat self-absorbed, but a lot less petty, and with a clearly defined purpose of alleviating whatever suffering I can). I am better because of my illness, and not just in spite of it.

But this process was, and still is, a journey. Chronic illness is nearly always accompanied by depression, and the need to constantly remain one step ahead of my illness has left me fearful and exhausted. I could never go through this alone...

A part of me will always be angry; such is the process of mourning the pieces of oneself that are lost to chronic disease. I have learned to accept the duality of being bitter and at peace; ignorant and enlightened... while still laying a foundation of hope for the possibility that I can still realize my personal dreams and ambitions, even if not in the exact ways I had expected.”
― Michael Bihovsky

“Self-care has become a new priority – the revelation that it’s perfectly permissible to listen to your body and do what it needs.”
― Frances Ryan

“Astray from a deep sleep chronic as I write by phonics, like insomnia I will always live the onyx night for revealing, and, upon it, still I'll steal the bright light of day right away just to keep building at speeds hypersonic.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“It was easier to visit him in the hospital at the height of his illness than to encounter him on the street struggling through this intermediate existence. I wanted to think of illness and recovery as two clear, diametrically opposed states.”
― Jonathan Rosen, The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions

“I'm so tired of everyone treading on eggshells around me. Like, yeah, I'm still working on my anorexia, and some days it's really hard... but that doesn't mean I can't have fun and do teenage stuff! I'm not fragile. And I want to have sex with you, what's wrong with that?”
― Alice Oseman, Heartstopper: Volume Five

“With a chronic disease, prognosis is really more of an agnosis; as long as a condition remains chronic, one simply has it; one can go into remission or experience relapse or return.”
― Elizabeth Freeman, Beside You in Time: Sense Methods and Queer Sociabilities in the American Nineteenth Century

“Incurable, hopeless, excessive, organic, ill: this is the language of chronic disease, of the static bodies it indexes and the defective temporalities it engenders. The modality of the chronic, then, is less safely habitual than the compromised, the unconjugated, the "would" in the sense of being able or unable to realize one's will.”
― Elizabeth Freeman, Beside You in Time: Sense Methods and Queer Sociabilities in the American Nineteenth Century

“It's okay to be down -- just don't stay there too long.”
― Jan Mariet, Finding Joy in Small Places: Supporting a Friend with Cancer, a Chronic Illness, or a Progressive Disability

“I am not my chronic illness. I am a person. LOL.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography

“He is closer to you than your breath, and He cares more than you realize.”
― Karen Brough, Be Held By Him: Finding God When Life Knocks You Off Your Feet

“My arms are open wide and ready to embrace your battle-weary form.”
― Karen Brough, Be Held By Him: Finding God When Life Knocks You Off Your Feet

“You could sit on this couch for the rest of your life, and I could not love you any more or less.”
― Karen Brough, Be Held By Him: Finding God When Life Knocks You Off Your Feet

“Social media would have us believe we can cure ourselves of all kinds of diseases but I think this is unfair at best and dangerous at its worst. It can make you feel like you’ve failed if you don’t get better. But the truth is, you can only make the best of your own situation. There are no cure all easy answers sadly.”
― Jackie Kearney