The Cheshire Cat

“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice; “but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!” (Lewis Carroll, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, 58)

This week I have joined 226 other bloggers on "Bloggers Unite"”, for Invisible Illness Awareness Week..  Nearly 1 in 2 people in the US have a chronic illness and about 96% of it is invisible.

Invisible Illness is a curious thing.  It is much like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.  Most of the time you see the grin, but not what is behind it. That smile can look absolutely perfect, yet it can hide a great deal of pain.  I can tell before I even get out of bed what my day is going to be like.  This morning, my right arm did not want to move.  Uh oh, it’s going to be one of those days.  I hobble to the bathroom, and then try to make it down the stairs without my 3 dogs knocking me down.  Where’s that cane?  Darn! I left it down stairs last night.  My right foot is the worst.  It screams with pain—mostly it feels like it is being burned by a blow torch, other times it feels like acid is burning me inside.  The weirdest feeling is sometimes it feels wet.  I have to look down to make sure I haven’t spilled anything on it.  It is very strange.   As Alice would say, it is “Curiouser and curiouser!”    The pain is a little more bearable during the day, but even so, it never leaves.  It is always there, just like the Cheshire Cat.  The nights are the worst.  The pain consumes my whole body.  I spend most of my time in the bath to help relieve the muscle pain, or in the bed.  I have to take pain meds most night.  Sometimes it works, and other times it just barely takes the edge off.  Last night was one of those sleepless nights.

However, I am just as guilty as anyone not believing or understanding the pain of others.    As a therapist, I knew my patients were in pain, and I could try to sympathize with them, but I know now I never really truly understood.  I wish I could go back in time and explain.  Even in my own family, my grandmother suffered from chronic pain.  Now my father does.  I have looked at people who park in handicapped parking, yet walk into the store.  I usually think to myself, “Why is he parking there?  He can walk fine.”  Now I realize maybe that person is in great pain, and will have difficulty even maneuvering the store.   My husband keeps encouraging me to get a temporary parking sticker.  I am putting it off, because I know I will get those looks now.  However one day, as I was trying to walk into a store, a group of senior citizens passed me crossing the parking lot, because my legs will no longer let me walk fast.  It completely wears me out to go into a super size store.  I now have an entirely different perspective of what these people in my life have gone through.  Unfortunately, I have joined their group.  Like Alice, I want to protest.  I did not sign up for this!

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

So, like Alice I am here among the “mad” people or in my case the “chronic pain” people.  We often hide our pain behind our smiles.  It is a double edge sword.  We want validation of our pain, yet we want to hide it too. We may not look “sick”, because we aren’t.  It is a very strange concept to understand.  We still want to get dressed and look our best.  Invisible Illness does not discriminate.  It can affect any age, race or gender, or at any inopportune time.  Just because we may "look our best", it does not mean our illness is still not there, lurking, like the Cheshire Cat.