Just because a person doesn’t look sick doesn’t mean they aren’t. When you look at the verse in scripture about how man looks on the outward appearance and God looks on the heart, you don’t take the meaning as seriously as you would if you were the subject of “man looking at the outward”. There are illnesses that people suffer with on a daily basis that to others it appears they are merely making the illness up. Just because they don’t have visible evidence and they don’t constantly complain does not mean that there is nothing wrong with them. I live with my daughter, who has chronic fatigue syndrome. She is not a complainer and “doesn’t look sick” so friends and family just consider her lazy because she, being 21, doesn’t go out and get a full-time job. It is very difficult to be treated and have her treated horribly because they don’t understand, nor do they wish to, her illness. They don’t see the concessions we make around what she can do. They also have no idea of the many times she has to, at the last minute, cancel something she planned to do. She may have been really excited about the particular thing, but when the time came to do it, had to cancel because, physically she couldn’t. We know that the things she does do all come with a price. If she wishes to go Salsa dancing, for example, she tries to “bank” energy hours a couple of days beforehand and two or three days afterward she spends extra time recuperating. It appears to everyone else that she does whatever she wishes and if so, should be able to handle working. The problem with working or going to school full-time is not the first or second day. It is the day after day without time to re-energize, so the energy that she went into the job with within a short time depletes and she can no longer go at all. Chronic Fatigue (CFS) is more than just being tired. It is a state of bone tiring exhaustion added to a list of other annoying things, like dizziness, pain, sensitivity to chemicals. UTube has a video done by Sleepydust that explains CFS about the best we’ve found. When Sarah was diagnosed six years ago, there was almost nothing out there on CFS. Now there is so much more. Yes, those with CFS get depressed. You would too if you felt like you were a prisoner of your body and that others just looked at you and figured you just need to rest a little and get on with life. It hurts so much to have my mom treat Sarah like dirt because SHE thinks Sarah is “scamming me”. How do you explain CFS to someone that is convinced they have the answer and that I refuse to see it? This illness doesn’t just impact Sarah, I get treated horribly too because everyone is convinced that I could do something about lazy Sarah and don’t. It seems like when you tell someone that Sarah has CFS, they always seem to say, I think I have CFS too. I’m tired alot. Wish it was that simple. I wonder, do they have weird symptoms come and go? Some being just annoying and others horrible? I’m sorry, but I just had to talk to someone.
