Meet @chronicallyyemilyy

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••••• She says.. “I was diagnosed with #Juvenile #Idiopathic #Arthritis when I was five years old. Being #chronically ill as a #child can be very isolating. You grow up a lot faster than everyone else and you go through things that even most adults don’t go through. I mean, how many five year olds take 10+ pills a day and get their blood drawn once a week? Cause I did! When I was younger, having arthritis was never something I talked about, mostly because I could barely understand it myself. But as I got older and began to understand, I wanted to tell my friends about what was happening to me even if they wouldn’t understand it. When I was in grade 3, I remember one day a bunch of my friends stopped hanging out with me. They wouldn’t talk to me, sit near me, nothing. When I finally got to ask them why, they told me they didn’t want to catch my “contagious old person disease”. They convinced multiple other people in my class that they would catch my disease too so they also wouldn’t talk or come near me. This went on for weeks. That was the first time I was majorly bullied for my illness. There had been comments or laughs about how much school I missed and other little things but it never really bothered me, that was the first time it did.Now that I’m older, people don’t react like that anymore. When I tell people now, most of them react the way I expect them to, surprised and confused. Most people still don’t believe that kids can get too. Or, a lot of people don’t know all the medical problems that come along with arthritis (hospital stays, surgeries, bring #immune comprised, etc.). Whenever I tell my peers about my arthritis I always #encourage them to ask questions so they can be educated instead of making assumptions about my illness. It’s normal for people who don’t live with chronic illness to be confused and uneducated about it” •••• Thank you @chronicallyyemilyy for sharing your story💓💓