I was diagnosed with ME\/CFS in 1995 after 3 years of being told I was overworking, over playing or stressed. I was advised to apply for disability by my Doctor and was handed disability on a silver platter by the state of North Carolina. Being one to never say “I can’t” I turned down the disability, found a new job and continued to work off and on for the next 5 years. I suffered a vicious cycle of crashing and rehabbing. I conceded in 2000 and reapplied for disability. This time I was turned down twice before finally hiring a lawyer and winning on the third appeal.<\/p>\n
I managed to live on my own for 15 of the 21 years I have been sick constantly walking a “tightrope.”<\/p>\n
In July my partner told me they could no longer “live with my disease” and I have been homeless since July.<\/p>\n
Even though I have sent every article I can find to my family they still do not understand how devastating this disease can be especially under extreme stress. They have turned their backs on me.<\/p>\n
I have run out of the medications that helped ease my symptoms and am living in my car with my precious dog Bella. We spend one night a week in a motel to bathe hoping to stretch our dollars while we pray for a miracle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Humans of ME\/CFS I was diagnosed with ME\/CFS in 1995 after 3 years of being told I was overworking, over playing or stressed. I was advised to apply for disability by my Doctor and was handed disability on a silver platter by the state of North Carolina. Being one to never say “I can’t” I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/kathleen_s.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}