Body Talk

Body Talk



It's 5am on a Monday and I'm up writing this when I should be sleeping. This is all thanks to my good friend prednisone. Sometimes it keeps me up all night and other times it doesn't affect me.  But making me have crazy sleeping habits isn't the only thing that prednisone has changed in my body.

It's time to get real. When we picture somebody who is "sick" we usually think super thin, super pale, looks like a vampire or zombie walking among us. This is just not true. In most cases being sick is invisible to everyone but the person who is going through it. One of the hardest things for me since I became sick has been loving my body. Not only has certain medicines and other medical related things caused me to gain weight like crazy but my body doesn't work right more than half the time and it is almost always hurting somewhere. It's hard for me to recall a day where I wasn't in pain or my pain wasn't so bad that it wasn't nagging me in my head about all the things we have trouble doing now.

I'm very insecure about how round my face has become since taking steroids and the fact that I have a goiter that can be seen from the outside on my neck makes it really hard to look in the mirror and feel pretty. Sometimes I feel like the girl I was before is completely gone and I keep trying to get back to her but you can't go back you can only move forward. I worked hard on having confidence before all of these medical issues and chronic condition cropped up but here I am starting from scratch and feeling like a teenage girl again. Just trying to figure out how to reconcile the two Katies. The Katie who is sick, who wants to be outspoken and advocate not only for herself but for others like her. Then there is the Katie who is still a 24 year old who wants to go out or go over to a friend's for drinks but ends up staying home because her joints or muscles are hurting again so she loses all the self esteemed she'd built up over the course of the week because she did 'productive' things. I have feelings this battle is going to last a while and the two Katies will exist separately in most ways forever.  But that doesn't mean I'm not going to try and change the things I can control like my diet and exercise habits.

At the end of October my wonderful brother started meal prepping for me and the course of the month I've lost ten pounds. His goal for was never weight loss because he thinks I'm perfect. His goal was consistency and making healthy food choices in hopes that it helps lessen my flare ups and the swelling in my joints.

I've not been so good on our meal the past week but in the words of Nick, "I'm going to start slaying the game," again today. It's Monday, I'm awake at 5:30am there is no better time to do a little yoga and have some overnight oats.