Something that really seems lost with my generation is the idea you can be sick but not look sick. Having an invisible illness and a chronic one at that is an extremely hard thing to deal with. I am only 25 and have spent the last 7-8 years battling my health and trying to figure out how best to both present it to people and to deal with it myself.
For the first few years, I did not have a "good" way to break down to people how my body was doing/holding up. I knew how I felt and my control or lack there of over my health but as someone who still new what it was like to be healthy it was just overwhelming to try and explain to people how I could be good one minute and sick the next. What was even worse was when I would be fine get sick than bounce back all within half an hour. People naturally began to think I was faking it since they knew the "old" me the one who was healthy.
After not having anything to use to explain to people one day I stumbled upon Spoon Theory and how it makes the topic extremely easy and relatively accurate to explain. If you have not heard of it before in essence the idea is that each day you have X amount of spoons. To do everything from getting out of bed, taking medication, getting dressed, going to school or work all cost spoons in varying amounts. Once you run out of spoons your body shuts down and you feel awful.
I have seen tons of different measures and ideas but each person is unique. The main idea though is that you don't have a ton of spoons often I have seen it to where people "get" 12-15 for the whole day. The cost for different things varys to however that often falls under the 1-3 spoon scale. A one spoon activity would be getting out of bed for me but for others it would be taking your meds. High spoon consumers would be things like exercise and going to school/work and doing more homework/work after the normal hours. All of this is extremely taxing on peoples bodies and until you either get sick or see someone you really know through and through you often have no clue.
Different days have different levels without rhyme or reason sometimes. Weather and stress can also be contributing factors for spoons running out. It still is hard to explain this to some people and often they still try to apply their own situation to spoon theory and do not see an issue. This is the best explanation I have found so if anyone else has an idea or way to explain please leave a comment below! Its frustrating and challenging but hopefully people and society will continue to improve.
