Awaiting Christmas

Last evening my husband came home from work and told that someone had reached out to him regarding someone with pancreatitis. "Would your wife be willing to talk with someone"? Instantly I was taken back to a time where without knowing I cringed. Just thinking about what others with this on a daily basis made my heart break.
If you are reading this with acute/chronic pancreatitis you are not alone. There are others who have traveled this ruddy path before you. Along the path may not be as worn there are foot prints of those who came prior.
The holidays are filled with pictures of goodies, none that we can tolerate. Feast are planned and the smells make us sick, physically. Digestion begins with the smell, the odors from food are enough to cause nausea let alone steatorrhea.
I just felt compelled to post today, I don't know you, I don't your specifics but if you suffer from pancreatitis I know you. I have felt everything you have, I know what it feel likes to know you are a burden, that life isn't suppose to be this hard. I know that look when you need pain medication and everyone looks at you like you have grown an appendage from your face. When the pharmacist watches you to make sure you are really sick enough to need this medication. I often wonder if those with cancer are treated so badly.
For those who are support for those with this illness just know that everything we are is affected. People who were once independent contributing members of society only want what we had. We want to blend back into the world and become invisible again. The holidays seem to bring out for me all that once was. Although that has been many years ago and I have moved on I am occasionally taken back to a me that once had a job could make long term decisions about the future and actually plan for a future.
In closing it is my sincerest wish for ALL to the Merriest Christmas on can have. I wish love and laughter and HOPE. That is something that is posted all over my home. HOPE sometimes is all we have but we hang on to it with everything. Hope defined by Webster: confidence in a future event; expectation of something desired.