love life

Why Having Friends With Illnesses Is Helpful To Me

/ Shannon DeRose / 3 Comments

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 The other day I told someone about my friends, this person knows me sorta well but not like super well the person was confused to why half the friends I talked about had chronic incurable diseases, She asked very kindly “Why do you have friends who are ill?”  And I tried to give a good answer but I didn’t do so well..

  So here is my answer…

 When you are in school you make friends who like some of the same things you like. When you are a working adult you make friends with people who like the same stuff you like. If you like going to clubs or going to see people perform you make friends with people who like the same. Its a human thing. You need something in common to keep being friends and to talk. When you are diagnosed or just become ill, you suddenly can’t relate to a lot of your friends or to anyone. But when you make a friend who also is ill you can relate, Oh you vomit four times a day? Oh have you ever done blank? Its a weird thing but you can talk about stuff that others would see as not socially acceptable.

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  My friends and myself talk about vomiting and getting stuff in a feeding tube, we talk about pooping and talking medicine and ports and picc lines and we talk about pain and walkers wheelchairs getting tired, we get it. And it’s because we understand it. I was in the hospital and I was FaceTiming with my friend Macy and she wasn’t weirded out when I showed her my picc line and when I vomit while we are talking.

   We need people that also have chronic illnesses even if we don’t get to see them a lot in person it helps knowing you aren’t alone. My friends and myself some of us have none of the same diseases and other friends we have one or two of the same diseases, but we all can understand each other on some level, sometimes just someone being able to understand the tired feeling is so helpful, when you are so tired but can’t sleep when pain sets in. it’s nice to know you aren’t alone.

   

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  Yea we talk about random things, I had a long text convo with my friend today and we talked about nothing but vomit.. it was on going for about an hour and it wasn’t like we were being gross we were just talking about our day. Life has a chronically ill person isn’t just watching netflix, it’s normally for me anyway watching netflix with a heating pad and vomit bucket.

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  When you have people who make you feel like it is okay to be well you. Is a very happy fact. So I guess I am trying to say the reason I have friends with chronic incurable diseases is because I need friends who can relate to me on some level. I need people to tell me “Are you napping?” “Did you take you’re walker?” I need people to make me feel like what I am living isn’t boring old shitting life but it’s a good life nonetheless. And my friends make me feel that way. They make me feel like we can press on. That every day is weird and random and pain is a part of every day but we can get through it. I think that when diseases make you feel horrid you know that life with this disease can be ever so changing.. Life has been fantastically amazing even in comas seizures and other things it doesn’t make it less just different..

  So yea…..

Shayweasing it…

Write Your Story

/ Shannon DeRose / Leave a comment

I have this notebook my sister Stephie gave me, on it it reads “Write Your Story” my whole life I’ve heard this saying write your story, make your own life, live your own life, but I have noticed lately.. People they don’t live there life’s, they just live… They just go doing nothing, but they aren’t taking breaths with purpose and they aren’t writing their own stories they are letting their stories be written for them.

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Its as if we live in a world where you can live with the way things are or we can change them or we can try to change them, we might take a long time we change them. But we are working throws it.

Its hard to write your own story, because that means you have to live with purpose and with love and you have to try so much harder than ever just to live, you have to be able to try you have to let yourself try and write it. It doesn’t mean you plan out every part of your life it means you live your life as it happens.

When you fall, you get up, you go on. You keep living you keep going on with your life. You don’t give up. You will get shot down on a weekly basis but you have to remember that you are amazing.

People will hate you but truly as long as you don’t hate you, you’ll be okay.. Life is amazing it demands to be lived. Life doesn’t happen when you sit on the side lines if you’re like me you don’t do well playing the field but you’ve found a way to be in the action without ever stepping a foot on the field. I don’t play the same games as the ones on the field but it doesn’t mean I’m not living.

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I will be the author of my own story, I will live my life. I can’t live anyone else’s because my life is my own. I take breaths and I walk and I believe in tomorrow. I also believe in today.

Because tomorrow could always be worse than today, so believe in today.

I leave you with this.. When you live life as just with going through and not really trying are you then one writing your story? Or is someone else in control? Or are you letting the way other people feel about you… Have an impact on your writing of your story?

 Write your story, no one could write it better then you…

Choose To Be Healthy

/ Shannon DeRose / 2 Comments

I’ve had different illnesses since I was a child. My body has never loved me. But neither has my mind. I know things about life that most people don’t even know. Because they live a life where their minds, brains, bodies and health is just something they never think about. “healthy” to most is a choice, they can choose to eat healthy food, they can choose to go on a walk for their health. But for me “healthy” was just nothing, it was just not a choice, my health has never been good, never horribly I’m about to die, but its never been good. Its always been something that I’ve had to think about through.

My brain, its always failed me. No matter how hard I would try my brain was not what I wanted it to be, or what everyone else felt it should be. But a few years ago when my brain turned fully against me and basically tried to kill me, I knew my life was going to be different after that, I knew I’d have to accept the fact that my body, my brain, my life was not going to be easy and that everything I could possibly do was be alive.

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So the strange question at hand is… What is healthy? What do I see for my future and how do I want to handle my health? My life? I want to be alive, thats the first thing. But I want to be awake and I want to be able to live happily and beautifully.

My body doesn’t seem to always enjoy doing things its suppose to do like eat food or make the necessary hormone my body needs to live. So I could choose to be upset or happy but I could and have choose to just have emotions and live as I please.

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Today I was riding in the car with my sister and a few of her friends, her friend said jokingly as he smoked his cigarette that he was only going to live till he was 50, because of all the smoking and drinking and partying he is doing now. But I knew in my heart that those sometimes or people like him or my moms biological father they are the ones who live while people like me and so many others we might not live to be 50, I’m not saying I won’t live I’m just saying I might not because of my health and its not because I don’t have the choice to either eat healthy food or not smoke or go for a run, but I don’t get to choose my heath. I barely get to choose my treatment, but I get to live, I don’t know how long I will live, I mean I could live to be 100 years old, so many treatments are available  and become available all the time.

What I’m trying to say is that if you can choose to be healthy, choose it. Because I don’t get that chance, and so many people like me don’t. And its not fair. So take care of yourself, love yourself, take care of your body, and health. Because you can lose it in a day. Or like me you can’t lose what you never had.


I’m happy I am, this blog post might not make sense, But I am Shannon DeRose this is my randomly rantingness. Thanks for reading.