Im Rachel Whidden and these are my excuses.

ex·cuse

verb

ikˈskyo͞oz/

1. 1.

   attempt to lessen the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); seek to defend or justify.
2. -google dictionary

This morning i woke up not to the obnoxious "good morning" song i use for my alarm tone, but to the sun coming in my window. I was in a warm bed with too many blankets and my puppy sleeping in my arms as always...a seemingly perfect morning, yet i could barely open my eyes. I felt physically exhausted, possibly from the work it took to breathe all night or possibly from the constant cough attacks waking me up every few hours. Without thinking i reached down to the nebulizer that hasn't left my bedside in days and poured a vial of albuterol into the cup knowing it'd be almost impossible to start my day with airways that refuse to open. I have a list of things to get done today, a few things id like to do just for me, and a list of "excuses" 10 miles long already forming in my mind for why i can only do half of it. I'm not ashamed to use them, they're perfectly valid, and heres why.

When i first started getting sicker i felt ashamed at the menial tasks i could not complete on my own. I felt like less of a person every time i asked for help to bring the groceries in or heard the snickers from my coworkers saying "shes soooo slow, i swear that girl is made of molasses". The looks of pure disgust when i had to excuse myself from the sales floor to break down after being yelled at for spreading my sickness to customers or the self hatred i formed towards myself as i tried desperately to stifle my cough so the band of assholes following me down the school hallways faking a cough and laughing at me would hopefully disband when they ran out of fuel.

I tried apologizing for my ongoing "cold" and i laughed it off with every joke about how maybe if i didn't smoke so much id be fine. i made every excuse for my illness except for the one that really mattered : i am chronically ill. This itself is technically an excuse. Its a justification for why i cannot do something or why i am the way that i am. Its a reason that i need to sleep and take various pills before each and every social event in order to feel well enough to do said thing. Ive always felt that making excuses based on my illness made me a weaker person. Thankfully i now realize that's not true.

I try to stay as busy as possible but the behind the scenes is brutal. I go to dinner after a 4 hour nap and an anti nausea pill. I see a movie after a small nap and always before 8pm as being out too much later just isn't something can handle. I cancel plans left and right because i know that while id love to go to your birthday party my body cant physically handle being out that night. I make excuses right and left and I'm done apologizing for them. As should everyone with a chronic illness. Know your limits. Know that a 45 min workout two days a week is an accomplishment when every fiber of your being in struggling to keep going. Know that the dinner your going to tonight is a big deal and order that steak cause your a bad ass bitch and you deserve it!! You did laundry today? Your a goddamn rock star and you deserve awards!! Being sick isn't easy. Allow yourself the power to recognize what you can and cannot do. The people who love and support you will understand every step of the way.

I implore you to check out the spoon theory for a well written explanation on how we make the decisions on what to do each day and why we cannot fit as much into our days as you'd like us to.

make your excuses. don't apologize for them. this is your life and your body. own it, do what you can, and accept what you cant. your worth far too much in this world to feel bad about ow others perceive you. the battles you face are long and they're hard but as long as you do what you can when you can baby your golden!!

*as a side note id like to include the links to my new posts ive been writing for CBS Chicago, http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/02/10/cystic-fibrosis-lung-transplant/?cid=facebook_CBS_Chicago

 im very excited to bring awareness to the struggles and triumphs of being a 20-something chronically ill woman navigating life between sick days and transplant meeting. The latest post is my third one and the links to the first two are at the bottom of the publication as well as a link to my new facebook page as im no longer accepting randon friend requests on my personal FB. My page will have updates on my health, my blogs, and my day to day for anyone interested in following me!! Also feel free to check out my instagram link on the side of this post in the about me section. Thank you for all the love adn support!! & Thank you for the patience between posts as lately my health has declined quite dramatically and i havent had the time or energy to post regularly as before. I appreciate all the love and feedback ive gotten so far with these posts and its an honor to have impacted so many lives. <3

Health and Body Image, Maintaining Weight and Finding Self Love

Lately ive started working out and exercising on a regular basis trying to get in shape to bring my lung function up, and to get in shape for transplant as it takes a huge toll on the body (obviously). Ive never been so motivated to improve myself and my overall general health! However i'd be lying if i said a huge part of it wasn't that the weight i put on, although very good for me, has made me feel a little (a lot) self conscious about my body. I have a noticeably rounder face and a girl can only suck in her stomach to a certain point!!

I was very excited that i hit the 115-120 mark (the ideal weight for someone my height to be going into transplant) after struggling for so long to gain; but after being in the 90s for so long i felt like a blob of a person! The challenge now is to exercise enough to tone myself up and be happier when i look in the mirror, but not lose the weight that ive managed to put on. With a high fat, high calorie, high protein diet im used to eating a certain way and feel like maybe im undoing my entire workout when i spend 30 minutes doing crunches and using weights then go make a grilled cheese sandwich with extra cheese and dip that bad boy in french onion chip dip because damn it if that stuff isnt delicious on literally everything!!!

I have to also keep in mind that a lot of my puffiness and ballooning is a side effect from some of the meds that i take every day. I first started to notice the round face when i was taking prednisone and it just never went away despite being off of it for over a month now, and my antidepressant causes some extra weight gain and bloating as well. These are things that are hard to control as medication cannot be skipped or stopped because i wanna look a certain way.

Im getting better at eating healthier and although i havent been at it for too long i can already see a difference. Im adding more vegtables and fruits and eating regular meals instead of snacking on junk all day long. Im still in my goal weight range (slightly above actually....its the chip dip. its all from the chip dip.) and im getting stronger everyday that i push myself to get in shape. Finding the middle ground between keeping this weight and loving the way i look is driving me nuts though! Forget relationships, finding self love can be so hard, but its important that you do it and part of loving yourself is understanding that a healthy body is a beautiful body. Im getting there, slowly but surely.

The Other Side of Your Support System

"Support system : a network of people who provide an individual with practical or emotional support." 

It sounds so serious at times, it sounds almost intimidating to me, and while i like the idea of it, the idea of a group of people in my life who together make up a system of constant love, support, and encouragement i also know that for people living with challenges like, but not limited to mine, this system can be very complicated. I'm not saying that the average healthy person doesn't have social problems but adding in chronic illness, constant hospitalizations, and stress through the roof doesn't necessarily help. Going into transplant one of the things they asked me about on my very first appointment was who do you have that you can lean on for support? Who do you have in your life that you can talk to, vent to, who can help you in hard times? My list went on and on. I had everyone. I listed my sister who's been my absolute rock for years and still is. Shes the only person i can honestly say i have absolutely zero doubts about leaving me in any way shape or form and who would run through a brick wall if she needed to. Shes strong as hell and shes a constant source of love and support. I listed my parents, who despite our rocky pasts and admittedly rocky present can be counted on for a certain level of support and help. I listed all of my friends and i listed my boyfriend because despite the hundreds of outs i gave him he swore it was worth it. I was confident in my list of people i was confident that this would be hard but that my support system wasn't something i had to worry about. Turns out i did. Here's the complicated part, the last 3 months I've gotten an out pouring of support online from different people, communities, companies, you name it all on my side wishing me well letting me know they're in my corner that they're behind me in my fight 100% and reading the love pouring in from all over the world melts my heart. To know that complete strangers care enough about me to to take time out of their days to send me a message or send me a package or a letter to brighten my day blows my mind!! Yet at the same time the people who i see on a regular basis are here feeling the stress and its overwhelming for them. I always thought of the people around me as the true heroes here, because while this is my life and i have to live it they have a chance to walk away from it and they never did, but lately a few have taken that walk. So while i have this online community rooting for me every day my personal support system was crumbling fast. The world keeps moving my friends have lives, they're 25 their finding their dream jobs, getting married, having children, going out on weekends, living it up like they should be and its not always ideal to sit in a hospital room. My boyfriend is an amazing man, I've never met anyone so caring and loving and constantly there for me no matter the situation but after 3 months stress builds, and he has his own well being and life to worry about and i cant be there to be a part of it and that puts a lot of strain on us as a couple. I  was caught up in my own version of what my support system was and what it meant that i forgot that the people in it are feeling this pressure too. I became too reliant on them. I lost my own sense of strength and i forgot the girl who walked into clinic head held high knowing i was gonna kick ass and come out a healthier person, able to travel, and live, and breathe like everyone else. Your support system can only be as strong as you let it, if you lose support for yourself they will feel it. its okay to lean on people and to need them but they cant be your only source of good. This process took it out of me, but I'm hanging in there. It took losing the people i leaned on the most to realize how much I'm capable of leaning on myself and since then I've been happier and healthier. Find the balance between asking for help and support and relying on the people around you for everything. Don't underestimate your own strength and will power, don't get to the place where your sitting in a room waiting for those people to come back because you just cant be you without them. Recognize that you need to support them too, take a little walk in they're shoes, understand the stress that this puts on them, and your rock solid support will stay diamond strong. 

People love you, let them when you need it, realize you can love yourself just as much though. <3