You don't LOOK sick

[okarol]

 

[Jean]

              

[Grumpy-1]

Oh gotta to print that out and hand it to those folks that don't understand what we are going through....                Grumpy

[Riki]

LOVE IT!!!  I'm uploading that to facebook......

[Sydnee]

 :yahoo;love it

had some say that the other day.

[bleija]

love this

[MommyChick]

Made me laugh  ... I get that comment a lot!

[iKAZ3D]

Weston Likes, he likes a lot

[duncan reamhiar]

i've lost over 30 lbs in about 3 months because 'm too sick to eat much at the moment.. i keep getting people telling me how GREAT i look.. pish on them...

[Icare]

This needs to be on the sign up page! It is sooo true it is funny.

[Charlie B53]

I had to save this so I can send it to family and friends when they say that I 'Dont look sick'!

Thanks!

[Michael Murphy]

I don't know what I hate more," you don't look sick" or when I explain I can't schedule anything Monday, Wednesday, or Friday because I am on Dialysis" and the person responds "I am sorry about that."  What the           Are they sorry for .  It is what it is. A response of that must suck would I think be ok.

[okarol]

Lately people keep saying to Jenna: "Are you alright? You look so pale." She hates it!
She is really annoyed because she tries to look good.
She has always been very fair, her skin is naturally very white, but perhaps the anemia is contributing.

[noahvale]

*

[Joe]

Karol, I had the same issue while I was doing PD. People always were telling me how pale I was, but I knew it was the anemia that was causing it. We fought the hemoglobin levels for months until I got the Epo dose balanced out. I was still pale, but not as bad. Hope Jenna works her way through this.

[Charlie B53]

I still consider myself to be one of the 'new guys' in here, so please understand that I don't really know anyone.

But I can't help wonder of Jenna is in her teens.  Appearance to a teen, even young adults, can be how to say, life altering (?).  Fitting 'In' with their peers.  And the younger they are to more hurtful some can be.  They haven't learned tact, patience, understanding, etc.  All adds up to very distressing times.

Jenna may not know all this, yet.  She still has a lot of learning about how peoples minds work, and how hurtful they can be without meaning to.

It can be hard on YOU in trying to teach her some of these things, she may not understand, yet.

Good Luck

[kitkatz]

I believe Jenna is in her late 20s.  She is the same age or close to my daughters' ages.  She understands what is going on perfectly.  Dealing with all this crappy disease is not easy for anyone.

[chuckdims]

I'm 28 and look normal.  One day at the grocery store my B/P dropped very low.  (My BP is always low.  A normal BP for me is 85/55.  So it must have dropped to 60s/40s, that's when I have trouble.). Anyway, I used a motorized cart and I got lots of looks.  Oh well.

[kristina]

I am always told by doctors, that I don't look sick and sometimes I feel as if "not looking sick" has been a great disadvantage in my life ...
... For example, when cerebral haemmorrhages were threatening my life, I "did not look sick" and that was the reason,
 why it took so long for doctors to take my condition serious enough and finally search for a diagnosis,
which was made at the very last moment... if doctors would have waited any longer, I would not have survived...
... Even when I suffered the stroke I had again the same problem with doctors and they did not take my condition serious enough,
because, again I did not look sick, even though the stroke had made me instantly half-sided paralyzed
and I could not speak anymore and was extremely distressed by trying hard to express myself without having a voice or the words ...
...but apart from that, I did not "look particularly sick"... and again, it took a long while for doctors to diagnose the stroke ...
One of the reasons why I hardly ever really look sick, is because I always take great care of myself and would never "let myself go"
and so medical misjudgements can ealily be made, even when it is life-dangerious, because some doctors are "only human as well"...
and sometimes medical judgements are made by first looking at the patient... and things can easily go wrong when the patient "looks so well"...

[okarol]

I still consider myself to be one of the 'new guys' in here, so please understand that I don't really know anyone.

But I can't help wonder of Jenna is in her teens.  Appearance to a teen, even young adults, can be how to say, life altering (?).  Fitting 'In' with their peers.  And the younger they are to more hurtful some can be.  They haven't learned tact, patience, understanding, etc.  All adds up to very distressing times.

Jenna may not know all this, yet.  She still has a lot of learning about how peoples minds work, and how hurtful they can be without meaning to.

It can be hard on YOU in trying to teach her some of these things, she may not understand, yet.

Good Luck

She just turned 29 in Nov., but yeah, dealing with kidney disease the last 14 years, I think she has seen and heard it all.

[Riki]

The thing that gets me when they say this.. sure, I've been on dialysis for 11 years.. I have a high hemoglobin, so i'm not pale, so I look fine... It makes me wonder when someone says "oh, but you don't look sick," how do they think I should look?