Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Why it's great to be sick!!!!

Well, OK, maybe it's not. Anyway, I am pretty down these days and am ashamed to admit that I often find myself wailing in a Nancy Kerrigan-ish way "Whhhhyyyy meeeee?", so I am trying to think of the advantages of being chronically ill!!!! Help me out here --

Good Stuff About Chronic Illness

When watching "Gray's Anatomy", you can jump up and shout "I KNOW WHAT THAT IS!!!" when they go rushing to operate on a patient with a strangulated hernia.

If your friend tries to get you to baby-sit her five kids, you can just look tragic-eyed and say you only wished you felt well enough to do so.

When hearing about senior citizens who literally have to choose between food and prescription drugs, you actually empathize instead of getting bitter about how Social Security will have completely collapsed by the time you're of retirement age.

You finally learn all that basic anatomy you were supposed to memorize in Mrs. Svenson's sixth-grade health class.

Your friends christen you with cute new nicknames, like "The Medicine Chest" or "Pill-Poppin' Polly."

You have a good reason not to eat your mother-in-law's cooking.

You get to think about deep profound stuff, like what shape your liver is in after all of that acetametophin.

You can always trump the irritating lady at work who is always whining about her latest nasal infection or ingrown toenail.

Being too nauseated to eat anything greatly reduces your grocery bill.

You can always strike up a conversation with hot bodyguards by pretending your surgical scars are from something more interesting.

You have reached a higher level of self-actualization by no longer obsessing about stray eyebrow hairs or bad hair days, because frankly it is a miracle if you can find clean socks and get out the door in the morning.

You'll never again have cold feet in the winter because you always keep the sock thingys from the hospital.

At family reunions, you can have really great conversations with Great-Aunt Velma and Cousin Mary about fiber.

You always know at any given moment where the nearest bathroom/wastebasket/plastic sack is.

If you're embarrassed about being an adult and still hating lima beans and spinach, you can claim that your doctor won't let you eat them.

You finally have a valid reason for being a social outcast.

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jen

"It's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle -- to get one's head cut off." -- LC

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