It's still hard to put myself first

Often when you have a chronic illness, the best thing you can do for yourself is to put yourself first. My upbringing, like many others, was decidedly against doing that. I'm still having to challenge my thoughts around this, and I'm slowly learning that putting myself first isn't necessarily selfish.

One aspect of putting myself first involves medical appointments. Growing up, if I thought something was unusual but a doctor said it was fine, I accepted what they said. That ended when I was eventually diagnosed with cancer when I was 21. The first 2 doctos I saw said the lump on my neck was nothing to worry about, and I believed them. My parents pushed me to see another doctor. I did, they ran tests, and I found out that my lump was Hodgkin's disease.

I'm not saying that doctors aren't smart or aren't professional. But no single doctor knows everything. I learned that I have to advocate for myself and push back. That's still difficult for me to do though, which is why I bring along someone to help me advocate for myself during appointments.

Another way I'm learning to put myself first is expressing my needs. My illness is dynamic, and most of the time when I seem ok it's actually because of adrenalin. I'm working on letting people know when I need to stop.

I also have to put myself first in ways that I don't enjoy. I would love nothing more than to visit my family and friends in the US. It seems like it should be easy. But then I have days when I don't have the energy to lift my arm to reach for a drink of water. I know that taking that kind of trip and spending at least 24 straight hours in airports and airplanes would cause me to experience a huge post-exertional crash and potentially lower my baseline. As much as I love and miss everyone, I can't do that to myself.

Society in general tells us that we're only as good as the work we do, the money we earn, or what we contribute. Therefore, if we don't contribute/aren't rich/don't have an impressive job title, we're viewed as lazy and/or selfish. I'm learning that I have to potentially be seen as selfish if I don't want to get worse. I have to put myself first.