Murphy’s Law: A Chronic Illness Poetry Collection

Posted in Chronically Ill Creativity, Poetry by

I have managed to collect a variety of poetry written by those suffering with ME/CFS as well as other Chronic Illnesses from all over the world.

Murphy’s Law

By Jody Kurt Schuller

I ran a marathon yesterday while drinking a bottle of liquor!

Well that’s what my body told me while I was staring into the mirror.
The reflection of confusion, what is happening to me?

I realize I need to seek help, but I’m too sick to even see my GP.
But I got responsibilities; a man has to take care of his situation.

Who would have thought this would be a daily conversation?!
Sure, I’ll be fine, it’s just a virus, and it has to go away.

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, Continue reading →

CFS Comic Strip- CFS/ ME Awareness Week 2015

Posted in Chronically Ill Creativity, Poetry by

One of my spoonie friends wrote about her CFS/ME journey as a comic strip and I absolutely love it, it talks about her journey from the very beginning to right now, she is by no means recovered but her functionality has improved and continues to do so as time goes on.

CFS Comic 1 Continue reading →

The faces of hope- CFS/ME Awareness Week 2015

Posted in Personal updates by

An estimated 250,000 people have CFS/ME in the UK, 1,000,000 in the USA and 17,000,000 worldwide.

But what do these 17 million people look like? Well a group of us who are on Toby Morrison’s online program thought it would be great to raise awareness to create a video & a collage of a load of our faces.

Faces of hope

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CFS/ME Awareness Week 2015 Creativity

Posted in Chronically Ill Creativity, Crafts by

Many of us with these illnesses and many other chronic conditions find comfort and release in being creative for me its origami and finger painting.

I find a sense of peace comes from doing origami and finger painting is well really dam fun that type of primal child type fun!

Others who are more talented create pieces about their illness in the forms of pictures, abstracts and even toy making like below.

image1(2)

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The Corrupted – A collection describing the different stages experienced with CFS (Part 2) – CFS/ME Awareness Week 2015

Posted in Art, Chronically Ill Creativity by

Averyl Ritchie is a wonderful artists I met in a CFS/ME group.

Her Corrupted Collection goes through the different stages of how she has experienced CFS/ME and it is a very beautiful depiction of what I think many of us have gone through.

Obscured Corruption

Obscured Corruption

This is how Averyl describes losing her cognitive skills – which is probably the worst part of CFS. Her brain is foggy, can’t think clearly or retain information. You forget words and conversations moments after they are spoken and drop everything you touch. This is invisible to others, and they can only see YOU, and not what’s happening inside. This is dedicated to a friend who experienced similar problems.

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CFS/ME in words – CFS/ME Awareness Week 2015

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As part of CFS/ME Awareness week a group of us from the CFS Health Centres came together and thought of all the words we associated with having this condition that effects approximately 17 million people world wide, one of the members so eliquently created 5 pieces of word art to illustrate the different aspects of CFS from our point of views.

Symptoms

In previous posts I have talked about various symptoms of CFS/ME but this illustrates just how many there are, but also some of the consequences of these symptoms, like the loss of relationships with friends and family, jobs and even ones sense of self.

Along with feelings of hopelessness, the fear of how long you are going to feel like this and if it is ever going to get any better.

Stages of recovery 1 Continue reading →

The Corrupted – A collection describing the different stages experienced with CFS (Part 1) – CFS/ME Awareness Week 2015

Posted in Art, Chronically Ill Creativity by

Averyl Ritchie is a wonderful artists I met in a CFS/ME group.

Her Corrupted Collection goes through the different stages of how she has experienced CFS/ME and it is a very beautiful depiction of what I think many of us have gone through.

Longing For The Girl She Used to Be

Longing For The Girl She Used to Be

This is the first painting the artist painted to express her pain. This dancer is grieving. She has lost her identity. She no longer can live her passion of dancing, and sits alone, sad and rejected.

Continue reading →

CFS/ME Photography – Awareness Week 2015

Posted in Art, Chronically Ill Creativity by

CFS/ME is a very real and debilitating and often life shattering chronic illness.

Some of my spoonie friends from the CFS Health Centre have created a number of projects to raise awareness of this horrible condition.

The first of which is a great project where several of us shared a pictures we had taken and what they meant to us.

Mine was a picture I took when I was in Sri Lanka just before I got really sick:CFS Fav Pic Me Continue reading →

How friends & family can help people with chronic illnesses

Posted in CFS Tips by

Tomorrow kicks off CFS/ME awareness week and I will be posting each day mainly creative things that us suffers have created to raise awareness.

But to kick off the week I thought that this would be a great way to get the ball rolling, in one of my online groups we created a document to give to friends, family or anyone else who it might be useful to; of things we thought that those around people with chronic illnesses could do to help make our lives easier.

It is hard for us suffers but it is really hard for those around us too, often those around us feel helpless and don’t know how they can help, this is a list (obviously not exhaustive) but to get people thinking of the little things they can do to help.

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Dealing with the unexpected when managing CFS/ME

Posted in CFS Tips by

In my previous post :What activity management means to me in dealing with my CFS/ME I talked about the methods that I use for activity management to ensure I pace myself. Carefully planning out my activity for the week.

But things don’t always go to plan, inevitably things pop up that you didn’t plan for so do you deal with these and try to avoid the push crash cycle?
Continue reading →