Imagine living an active life in your young prime age to suddenly get diagnosed with a debilitating auto-immune disease that would change your life forever. It makes you realize how we take for granted the little things like walking, getting dressed or being able to pick up a pen, to all of a sudden finding yourself in a wheelchair. After getting a diagnosis of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis you find yourself on a mission to find relief from the most excruciating pain. Doctors do their part to prescribe medication that they may have briefly received informational training from the pharmaceutical companies who will tell these doctors why their drug is the drug of choice. As the patient, all you want is your life back and you are willing to try anything. You trust the doctors and the drug companies until things take a change for the worse and your life becomes a roller coaster ride like no other. Each chapter will be a significant phrase that would have impacted life that still leaves me with the question of How can I still be Standing? When a side effect coincidentally brings phrases like You look like you are in the last stages of Aids or ‘You have Cancer or You are the Poster child for side effects . Being close to death, fighting for your life and being asked if I had a Will or Advance Directive. Do these doctors or pharmaceutical companies truly understand what comes with suffering a side effect or do they choose to ignore it? As much as we want to ignore it, we just can’t, We live it and if we are lucky we live thru it. To take a moment to learn the impact of how it affects a family when they see their loved one get Cancer, Heart failure or being questioned about having Aids when all along it was a side effect from a medication that was prescribed. Sometimes you feel the only option is to give up and you find every reason to justify why life is not worth living until you remember the reason why you fight. The blessings and the Angels in disguise that get you thru each and every obstacle. Always find the will to fight for your life and even during the darkest days, dig deep and have hope. I am always in awe of where I was suffering and in despair, thinking only negative thoughts, preparing to die and writing good-bye letters to each of my kids to where i am now…STILL STANDING
