Caffeine and sleep

 Finally, my body seemed tired of caffeine. About one month ago, I stopped craving coffee, drinking tea instead, and several days ago, I stopped craving tea, drinking water instead (how boring it is!). So for several days, my body has been caffeine-free, totally. What's the consequence? I slept well, naturally. I felt sleepiness in the nights and went into sleep about a half-hour after lying down. This had never been the case during my entire adult life. 

Never before I was able to cut off caffeine so completely. I drank either coffee or tea. Though I learned that caffeine was not good for sleep ages ago, my direct experience never proved that theory to me. This time is different, my body rejects caffeine. Something changed inside my body. And what it is and what was the cause, I still do not know. 

Life is full of mysteries. 

Another milestone!

Yesterday, I did something in credible: started from 3pm, I walked over 1.5 mile, then went to boating with a friend, came back almost 9pm. I had minor crash at night, a real "minor" crash. years ago either one of these invents, or even half of it, would knock me down for days, even weeks. So I have reason to believe that my health just made another step forward.

Milestone

I really don't remember how many "milestones" I made during my Chronic illness history since over a decade ago. Every time after I wrote done the improvement I made, I almost unexceptionally fell into another pit of symptom attack, sometime a relapse. But clearly, again, recently I am experiencing the physical energy that I had not enjoyed for longtime.

Not only I can have more physical activities, I am also able to talk more without suffering much shortness of breath, which was the main symptom I had for the past decade (forever!).

While my physical energy increased, my mental energy started going toward the opposite direction. I often feel "brain fog", memory lost, and difficult to think, to read and even to write. I quit writing (even in Chinese) anything serious over two years ago. I only hope, just like my physical energy, my mental energy would recover in near future so I could enjoy my intellectual life as I did before.

Nonetheless, I learned to accept. I try my best to feel content with whatever I have so far. "As good as it gets".

A Milestone

Haven't updated this blog forever. Because, mainly, I was tired of repeating. Not that I had no progress, but all I had been through during these couple of years were quite the same as before: symptoms, crashes, taking care of myself, diet, etc., all the same. I know I can be well again, it's just matter of time.

Today I did something worth to write down. I biked 4 miles, and more importantly, I came home feeling totally fine! During past 10 years I only dared to try this (biking 4 miles) twice, and both with dreadful consequences - the second time I literally crashed down in front of my door (I had to lied down on my front lawn otherwise I would have heart attack!), and followed by days or even weeks of being seriously ill. But today, I AM FINE!

I first biked to Food Lion, which is 2 miles from my house, bought a little grocery, then biked back along different route, which is also 2 miles. I had to walk on several sections of the roads because of up hills, but overall, it wasn't too hard for me.

So now I am positive to say that I am in the best physical condition during recent 10 years. However, I know that in order to prevent health going down again I must keep good life habits, include lots of physical activities, good diet, and sleep well.

My "dark age" of chronic illness officially started in 2008, though I was already very ill before that point. Now I still cannot say that I am cured. But I have no doubt that if I can keep my good life style I certainly will be.

Health is UP!

Finally, my health is up again. For recently a couple of weeks I've not felt overwhelming fatigue and during recently several days I've done the most work for years without a crash!
2015, I had similar good period - it lasted for almost 3 months until final crashing down. This year summer I experienced another up rally but soon back to my "normal" condition which was sick... Hope this time lasts...

Healing effect of gardening

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Haven't post anything for ages. My health has been stable for almost a year. no major relapses but many crashes. My energy level shifted from 50% - 80%. Could be better, but feel lucky that didn't got worse, and to be able to enjoy some life. No complain.

Just discovered that gardening had amazing healing effect on eyesight. My sight declined terribly during recently one year or two. Sometime it's so blurry that I worried that I might lose sight all together sooner or later. A few days ago I did lots of gardening as my physical energy got much better (God bless!), then suddenly, I found my sight got so much clearer than only half hour ago! Later on a friend who worked in medical profession said that staring at green is good for eye. No wonder! She also said the looking far distance was also good. Yes, I know that part. Living in a place that is surrounded with trees, I often feel like I need to look at distant view (I wrote a blog about that a couple of years ago).

So recently, every time my eyes got hurt by staring at computer screen (I should quit using computer!) I go back yard to work with plants. It indeed worked every time! Especially when there were sunshine on green leaves!

I Canceled My Free Health Check Up And This Is Why

On past Friday, Coventry, my health care provider called me and made an appointment on past Monday, for a nurse's visit with equipments to check me up, for free. I agreed first then after a day's serious thought I canceled it. Why? Because I already knew what would be the outcome: everything is fine, even beautiful, bloody pressure, breath, heart rate, weight, height, etc..

Am I fine? I had two angina attacks during the past 3 weeks, the first one was severe, but only lasted hours, the second one was less severe, but lasted more than a day. So why didn't I go to hospital? because if I did, chances were "Mei He (aka Yun Yi) died from heart attack on the way to the ER". Hey, my reader friends, I am not kidding, because to ease my chest pain I needed completely rest, water, and good foods, and all of these were not likely provided by the heroic rescuing, by putting me on stretcher that undulates its way into ambulance which turbulently rushing into hospital. I would not die by heart attack, but I am sure I would die in that way during my heart attack. (I know not everybody would die like me because everyone's strength or resistance is different, and my resistance to such struggle is almost zero!)

Modern society is complicated cooperative system, that each of us take care different things (experts!). This is great because I learned that we humans are good team-workers and that's one of reasons we survived and prospered. But for personal health care, I doubt how much good this cooperation would do. I doubt how much good this marvellous and formidable edifice of modern medicine and health care would to do each individual, except making most people more and more dependent regarding their own health, more and more ignorant about how their own bodies work.

I think medicare system might be good for majority, because most of human beings do follow some certain principles. But I also have reason to believe, that as each individual becomes more and more unique, human race is becoming a more heterogeneous collection, which can be very hard to deal with by general principles, like what modern medicine has been doing.

During my past over 10 years of health struggle, I had been told by doctors again and again that I was perfectly fine, all my test reports were not only fine but fabulous, even when I was in extremely dreadful condition. So I quit seeing doctors, and put health in my own hand. Since then I've been making real progress, slowly, almost only discernible by myself (all people who know me pretty much give up the hope that I could be well). Indeed, without help, I paid tremendous price for each piece I found to solve this monstrous puzzle, but each piece I found is solid and without any "side effects". Early this year, I reached such a great condition that I even thought I was out of darkness "eventually", but I slipped unfortunately again over two month ago. However once again, I am on the way up, and I believe I will be in an even better place than previous time.
Am I really this confident? Yes, because my health care is completely in my own hands.

P.S. Having said all of this, I still objectively keep an option that is I would never be completely healthy again. But even that, I know is still a better condition than to give myself to medical profession.

An Unexpected Crash

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I had been having great time for months, during which I seldom had any serious crashes. That is to say, I still had some down times, but they were too trivial to mention. Last night I had something more serious that I feel like to put a few words on it.

I was invited by an old friend's husband to dinner. I was happy to go, thought it's time to have some social life. And I went, felt great at the beginning. But a little later I realized my energy was dropping down, and when I finally left, I felt my legs were extremely weak, almost gave way when I walked to my car. I drove back anyway, realized I was actually quite "dehydrated", so I drank a lot of water. Soon after my heart started beating violently, and I could absolutely do nothing but lie down in bed. I realized this was something I would call "crash", a relatively serious retreat during my overall excellent health progress.

I feel OK this morning when I woke up, recovered a lot, though still feeling the weakness. I found my condition still goes like a cycle: after going extremely well for a while, it would go down a bit. And if I were not careful enough during the period it went down, I got punished. Last night was an example of carelessness: I overdrew energy during my energy cycle went down. I suppose I would feel good again in matter of a couple days.

This is a warning that I am not yet ready for social life yet. Nonetheless, I had wonderful time with two handsome strangers (my friend's husband and step-son). This was something I had not done for ages, and I am pleased that I was still able to socialize with people.

Finally I Feel Bored!

English: A bored person (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My physical condition has been going upward quite amazingly since last fall. By far, I say I've reached a solid 90% of my energy level. What a achievement! However, recently, I found I often felt a bit empty and bored. Am I upset by that? No, because having been struggling with body health for so long, I know this is good sign, which means I am having EXTRA ENERGY.

During my past years lots of people believed that my physical health problems were caused by my "lonely life", or lack of activities. But the truth is, I had no time to feel lonely or bored during all the past years because I was so mentally fully occupied with my physical problems. Only starting from very recently, when I am physically feeling well, I start having this "luxurious" or "metaphysical" mental issue: feeling bored and occasionally even a bit lonely. Ironic, isn't it? And while I am feeling bored I also feel quite happy, by acknowledging that I am finally "normal" again!

How Much Have I done? A Lot!

These were what I've done today:
- Taught two classes, one in the morning, one in the afternoon.
- Walked about 35 minutes along trail after classes, and took lots of photos during walking, and occasionally jogging.
- Went to a brick center after walking to take pictures, wondering around there about 10 minutes.
- Edited lots of photos after I came home; ate dinner, took care of some minor kitchen work, and upload 16 images unto shutterstock (which took quite long time).
- about 15 minutes yoga stretch at night.

These are A LOT. Especially, considering the fact that two classes were enough to crash me during my past years.  I am quite pleased to say, I've reached a major milestone on the journey of my health recovery. I feel 100%. But since I don't feel like this everyday, overall I should say definitely that I am at (my own) 90% energy level.

85% But Feels Like 90%!

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Just coming back from 45 minutes walk! It's been amazing! I should not claim that I've recovered 100%, but I am getting close to it bit by bit, steadfastly!

My energy level was lifted up from 60% to 80% since October last year, right after I started to take Padma Basic. For all these 4 and half months, I only had a few minor crashes, which ended in several hours, or maximum one day. Overall, not only I can handle all my daily routine with ease, I also don't get much problems after my weekend classes. I have to give credit to Padma, I believe it provides me so much nutrition that I could not get from diet alone (I am a lousy cook!).

Now, I believe my energy level just reaches 85%, hopefully sometime in this year, I will be at 100% of myself again. And don't forget, my goal is 110% or 120%, because my 100% is not the same as 100% of normal health standard.

Anyway, despite of several symptoms I still have, I do feel my life is on the way back to me!

Is It Placebo Effect?

In a Chinese forum I was asked how I was sure that the effectiveness of Padma Basic (along with several other herbs I mentioned) on me was not placebo effect. My answer was simple: I was skeptical from the beginning.

I don't have a lot of knowledge about placebo effect, but I suppose it has to be based upon patients' belief in treatments. I was ill for years and I had been disbelieving - or at least doubt - all medicines and herbs, and put all my hope almost completely on diet and rest. I did very good job on this account because in more than 2 years I was recovered up to 70% (from 30%!). But I found diet alone was not enough (I am a lousy cook and the last place I like to stay is kitchen), so I decided to open up my mind again, started to take several herbs since last summer. "Magically" I found tangible positive effects of a few herbs which I tried years ago but did not find them effective (Later I realized the reason that the herbs did not work years ago was because I was in such serious trouble that only diet could help). This time, an online friend recommended this Padma Basic to me, I decided to try because I found after a full year effort on diet and herbs, my health condition was still stuck on 70-80% level. The result is absolutely stunning: I found I was able to do things that I could not do for more than 5 years!

Having said all of these, I still believe in lifestyle is the most crucial. I would doubt that Padma Basic would work the same way like this if I took it 5 years ago. But you never know until you try!

Health Chart

Just created this health chart by using google spreadsheet! It shows my health level (or energy level) since my teenage years. Thing is, I've never been truly healthy since 14, and started having serious trouble after I reached 30 (the year I came to this country), and most years of 40s were definitely in the lowest pit. 

Now, I may not be ambitious/greedy to reach 120%, but my realistic goal is to reach 110% in near future!

Padma Basic

It works for me!
The date I started to take was 09/27/2014.

A Retreat After A Giant Step Forward - My Body Says No To My Passion!

English: Sleeping cat (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It seems I overdid again. Not sure how long this punishment would last, but certainly, it's not going to be just a few days, or a "minor step back", as I mentioned in my previous post.

I recently discovered my new passion: gardening. My front yard is getting beautiful. But it has been proven that gardening did more harm to me than good, even though I did not really "push" myself at all (only one of a few flowers a time!). I crashed again and again. My body simply says no to my passion!

Not only my health take one step back, my financial situation also suffers. Yes, I have to make very penny I spend, because doctors did not believe there is nothing wrong with me!

On the other hand, I have to focus on the fact that I had made the biggest improvement in recent 5 years. I need to be more patient, that's all.

Thinking carefully, these are the reasons I stumbled:
1. overly exercises. I did avaragely 3-5 times a week, which was fine first, but later after I increased the amount for each time, it was a little too much. Again, I wouldn't be able to tell how much was too much because when I was exercising, I felt fine.

2. The extreme humidity. For weeks we had extremely humid weather, it did not provide oxygen I needed when I exercised. So, I felt fatigue first, later on, symptom was triggered.

There are what I could think of now. Maybe there's more which I am not aware of. Well, what else I could do except going back living in my old "lifestyle" for a while.

Rough Weekend

Sunday (Photo credit: _bobi + bobi)

I had rough weekend. It seems my increasing exercise overworked my heart, and during the past weekend I had crashed (heart malfunction, my old "friend"). I had to cancel one of my Sunday classes. I almost decided to push through, because my money is getting tight, but finally I decided to rest, because I reckoned that losing money was still better than suffering.

I am still on the "uptrend" since February. I had total about 4 or 5 medium scale crashes total, which is not bad at all. All I need to do is be careful with exercise. Rest is still more important to me.

An Update and A Brief Review On My Past

I have been doing steadily well for several months. No major crashes, and if I over exercised, the "consequence" usually last only for hours, or maximum couple of days, during which I could still take care of myself. I give myself a score about 80% (which is better than my last year 80% at the same time, because I started to score my energy more reservedly).
All my treatments are still diet, rest and exercise. I equipped with some multivitamin, which seems helpful, but overall, I know foods are the most essential.

Looking back, here is a list of the symptoms I had (or still have) for all past years, start from the most severe ones:

1. Heart malfunction (include beating too fast or too slow, or irregularly. Sometime they came slowly, sometime suddenly. One type of symptoms seems like heart muscle spasm, but I was not "scientifically" sure);
2. Shortness of breath (asthma like);
3. Stomach upset (extreme hunger/heartburn);
4. Extreme fatigue;
5. Constipation,
5. Arthritis;
6. Muscle sore and pain;
7. Brain fog and headache.

The heart problem exists since my early teen years and had been ignored by myself until my middle 30s - when it was too serious to be overlooked. Doctors could not find any solutions so I had to work on it on my own. Even though I found treatment: exercise (walking), but at the time (between about my age of 35-45) my tough fate didn't allow me to have full care which I desperately needed. These tough life experience worsened this heart problem, also brought me all the extra different symptoms, and together with my heart problem, they made negative circles, or chain reactions frequently by triggering each other, especially during the past a few years.

The negative circle is like this: my heart is desperately in need of exercise., and exercise needs energy, so, the less energy I have, the less I could exercise; and the less I exercise, the weaker my heart functions; the weaker my heart functions, the less I am capable of exercising. so on and on...
The positive circle is this: the better energy I have, the more exercise I could do, so my heart would function better; and the better my heart functions, the more exercise I could do, so the more energetic I feel.

The cause of the bad circle looks like my heart, as most doctors would suggest. But I know it is not (at least at this stage), because I had the heart problem since I was very young. I would say it is a "genetic" problem. If heart was my only problem, exercise would simply solve it. But as we can tell from the circle I describe above, in order to exercise, I need energy. So, the real cause is lack of ENERGY.

How can I get energy? Foods. We humans are not like plants who can MAKE energy by themselves, we need foods from which our energy transfer. All these years I had been doing terribly on my diet, so not only  my body lacked energy, but also in huge "debt". No doubt I had stomach problem (hunger) too. So during the past two years I was pretty much working on diet. I also realized that, not all foods are right for our body - different people, or people in different health condition need different type of foods. So what would be the right foods for me? This is another big lesson I learned during the years with huge price! The right answer is "listen to my body", instead of listen to doctors or nutrition professionals*. This, is a simple policy that I followed for these couple of years (I also found, that my body would send out clearer signal what it needs when my health condition is better. So when health is bad, it's also harder for me to know what I want to eat). And finally, I found I am closed to the positive circle.

Of course, I am not really there yet, but I see the light.




*Of course, I am not saying that we cannot take their words as suggestions. But strictly follow their advices is not the way I would recommend. I also understand that many people who have no ideas about what their bodies need will have to listen to experts.

Sick or Not, Who Decides?

As modern medicine evolved into this formidably complicated ("obese" is a better word) system - from theory to practice, from financial/labor investment to sky high price, modern people seem to completely yield themselves to medicine authority, for any trivial issues to serious ones, unquestionably listen to doctors, depend on doctors, and no longer listen to their own bodies, no longer depend on themselves.

We have annual check up, if the results said you have this or that disease, you would believe totally, and take whatever treatments doctors assigned to you, even if you felt completely nothing wrong with your daily physical function. And sooner or later you may still felt nothing different but, after going back check up again, doctor told you that numbers were all good now, then you certainly believed that, felt happy that all your suffering was over, even though all you suffered during the "illness" was "taking pills". On the other hand, there are a huge amount of people who claim being sick, or even chronically sick, but doctors could never find anything wrong with them. So these "sick people" have to do "doctor shopping" again and again, the result was the same: the numbers (of check up) are all "beautiful". At this point doctors usually would suggest that the patients' feeling ill was "imagined". So here comes mental issue: how is your personal life? Have you been feeling depressed?

Usually this type of "patients" with "beautiful numbers" have two choices: listening to doctors and take those anti-depressant and get sicker and sicker, or, refused to accept doctors' assumptions about mental illness and put the health into their own hands. I am one of the latter who refused to admit I was mentally ill. After a few attempts (back 10 years ago) trying to get helps from cardiologists I pretty much realized they could do nothing good for me. Even though after all these years I am still not completely recovered yet, I have no doubt that I will reach that day, sooner or later.

I also know many people who listened doctors' suggestions ("mental illness") and ended up with disastrous consequence. One of examples is Sophia Mirza (1), who died in 2005 with CFS when she was 29. Before she was died, she was treated as a mental ill patient. According to Wiki: "Mirza's physical symptoms were treated as a mental condition and her carers were accused of 'enabling' her. In July 2003 Mirza was sectioned for two weeks by her doctors, who believed her condition was psychosomatic, an action which her mother believed severely worsened her condition". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Mirza) 
I personally believe that the death of Sophia Mirza was mostly caused by medical treatments.

There are tones of other patients who followed medical experts also had very serious consequence. Many of them could not even handle their daily life. And the chronic conditions last not only months, but years, some of them decades (mine is over 10 years). When these patients realized that listening do doctors was essentially wrong, usually it was very late. For some of them they it was indeed "too late".

Most people believe that science of modern medicine knows everything about our bodies, so they naturally believe that if doctors find nothing wrong with a person, this person must imagined his/her illness. Many "normal" people don't even know that there exists a huge population of "invisible disease patients" (I don't remember where I've read that the population of invisible disease patients in US are approximately 1 million). This, is so unfair to most unknown illness patients, because not only they don't get any helps from professionals (2), but also they don't get much mental support. They have to live not only with physical suffering, but also mental isolation, misunderstanding, social stigma and prejudice (many of them even come from family members). (I have many personal stories about this so just don't let me start...)

I think, the real blind spot is, after human mind evolved for so long time, we have been so amazed by left hemisphere of human brain (reason) that we forgot our right side brain (feeling, sense) is the "real boss" (I actually tend to believe that many people pretty much lost the ability to "feel" over the course of "civilization"). I believe, as far as our physical health is concerned, we better follow how our bodies feel than to depend on the numbers of check up by machine. This is not to say that I don't believe in science, nor to say that the numbers checked by machines are all useless, but only mean that the function of our bodies are way more complicated than what modern medical science can cover (so far), so better we use professionals' opinions as references, in many cases, if not all cases.

Modern society is a complicated machine, in which people work in different "parts". Modern cultures create "experts" in different fields, and these experts usually know nothing about others fields. Humans become more and more like tools that work in different separate parts of modern machine: lawyer, engineer, doctor (and among doctors we have eye doctor, lung doctor, cardiologist, dentist, etc.). My experience told me, that if we really know nothing about the fields outside of our own professions, and completely trust those experts, we easily end up with huge mistakes when we do "business" with them (I had bad business with lawyer, car mechanics, etc.), and the fault is our own. Since health is most crucial to our lives, doubtlessly, the biggest mistake we could ever make is to completely trust medical experts, ignoring completely what our won bodies telling us.




-------------------------------

1: More information about Sophia Mirza:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJvFwhW3FUY

2: For me this is acceptable because I actually believe many illnesses are "personal", so it's up to patients themselves to cure.

Journey of Up-climbing

Country Road (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For quite a while I have not written anything, both English and Chinese. My health condition is drawing my full attention - I am experiencing some crucial changes inside my body - for good.

During my past a few years every major relapse marked by my serious cardiovascular symptoms, such as frequent heart irregular beating, shortness of breath. During this period of time, I was totally dragged down to the bottom, had tremendous difficult to move (bedridden). The journey of recovery usually started from "ceaseless" hungry and I had to eat a lot to satisfy my stomach. This fact convinced me that my worst symptoms - cardio - were caused by severe lack of nutrition, especially protein. The fact was, after I "feasted" for a while, my hunger disappeared and my heart became normal. Years ago I considered this hunger symptom as "illness" and tried very hard to fight against it, the result was worse.

My second step on recovery was detoxification. After "feast" my body got a little stronger, so those parasites live together with me. I learned after all these years hard lessons that there are two ways to do this: diet and exercise. However, since I had serious nutrition deficiency, the diet alone not only won't work, it would cause me worse trouble: my body cells could not receive nutrition they need so it could not rebuild themselves. So, exercise is a choice. But I had to be very careful, because overdoing does harm too.

Maybe, the last step would be exercise combining with diet, to do thorough detoxification. Again, I will need to be careful with this step, not overdo with both exercise and veg diet.

I am currently on the second step. After gaining some extra weight for over two years, I am terribly unfit and need lots of exercise.

Also, as my energy climbing up, I am able to do some serious house cleaning (still only maximum about couple of hours a day). Since my last relapse (February) I have not do much house cleaning. I found my dirty kitchen also is a major toxic source for my body.

Overall, I am in progress. And I am very happy that I am in control of this progress.

Am I cursed? How much phyical illness to do with morality?

Image via Wikipedia

This morning I received an email from an old friend. It was a link to a video of a lecture about how our spirit affects our physical health. It sounds good I know, but just after watching about 10 minutes, I was feeling like wasting my time to some superstitious crap!

Not only the speaker's (he looked nice and health) sluggish tone made me impatient , the contents was mostly irrational. Be fair to say, there are a few interesting things in his speech like how those ancient masters such as Confucian or Buddha made their core theories based on Five Elements - the ancient Chinese interpretation of the nature, but the relationship he made between human beings' physical illness and "moral" quality is just a pure ignorance to me.
It seems to me, that when people have no answers to some physical phenomenons, they tend to believe there are something to do with spirit, such as moral quality, faith creed, whatsoever. But the facts are out there: so many evil-spirited people are physically healthy, and so many nice people get ill. I really don't think there is a need to write an research paper to prove this. But the question is still there: do most people tend to be superstitious or religious when they are lost?

Since the video was sent by my friend who knew that I was chronic ill, I had to assume that she must believe that this video will do good to me. Even though I understood that her intention was completely innocent, I still could not help to write her an email to express my feeling of being offended (I didn't really say the contents are all crap though. Maybe I should).

Frankly speaking, I have been having trouble with my friendship for a while.. During earlier years of my illness, most of my friends seemed to be more understanding, but for such a long term, they must be tired (which I understand), or, simply don't know what to do. They either estranged themselves from me, or tried to convince me that I am not physical ill at all. So I end up losing patience because it is so much energy taking to keep communication. And needless to mention, some of their "understanding" are just destructive to my health.

Once upon a time, I had to doubt myself: am I really cursed? or do I really have big problem with making friends? Until one day I found online community and discovered lots of CFS patients had been experiencing exactly same situation like mine (guess collectivism works in some way). So I no longer doubt myself, no longer put relationship above the truth of what I know.

And that this attitude itself - putting truth above relationship - is against Chinese tradition, because due to Chinese moral tradition, (mostly confucianism) ethics is almost totally based on interaction with people, which I think is one of the most poisoning elements in Chinese cultural heritage.

So, as I mentioned earlier, as a rebel, I choose truth, instead of relationship: yes, I am chronically ill, but I am a moral and mentally healthy person.