One of the weird things about having a chronic illness is that people, even medical practitioners, can't really comprehend that chronic illnesses fluctuate in severity

Every time I get the tiniest bit better, every one of my five medical practitioners takes responsibility. And sometimes the improvement is from one of their treatments! But the others will certainly not listen to me if I say it's from somebody else's 😂

And my non-medical friends get super excited, as if this is the beginning of a permanent cure

Every time I get worse, my practitioners are visibly upset. Not just because they care about me (I appreciate that part!), but also because they thought their treatment was working

I don't know how my non-medical friends react, because usually I'm too sick to see them

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This post is brought to you by somebody who was all praise god!!!11!! because I looked like I was doing better than the last time they saw me, several years ago

When I tried to explain that I had been better in the interim, and was now not doing so great by comparison, and was sad about it, their eyes went out of focus. I was not complying with the narrative

@NilaJones Frustrating. I used to work with Crohns patients. Even the ones responding well to treatment had a fluctuating journey. We used to explain it to them by drawing a wave pattern across a page, then drawing a horizontal line (= timeline) through the middle of the wave, so they could see dips above and below the line, representing the normal progression of the disease.