What are different types of chronic illnesses and why are more people experiencing chronic illnesses each year? Chronic illness is often applied when the course of the disease lasts for more than three months. Common chronic diseases include arthritis, asthma, cancer, COPD, diabetes and viral diseases such as hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS. Due to the wide variety of chronic illnesses, they result in 70% of deaths each year. People are experiencing chronic diseases due to the fact that humans are living longer than they did before, which causes them to be more susceptible to chronic diseases. The audience will be a group of college age, nursing students attending a seminar for one of their classes in order to understand the depth of chronic diseases.
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You don’t see it coming and then all of a sudden you are blindsided. I was blindsided a year ago in April. I had difficulty seeing out of my left eye starting in February, but didn’t pay any attention to it. When I finally made an appointment with my ophthalmologist, the severity of my eyesight was worse than I thought it was. I was scheduled for an MRI to see if there was a tumor, spinal fluid, or anything to figure out why my optic nerve was swollen. Throughout the year, I had multiple tubes of blood drawn, including 17 at one time at the Cleveland Clinic, several road trips to get different opinions, two serious hospital stays, one painful spinal tap, way too many seizure-like activities—causing memory loss—, and nine MRI’s. Nothing was coming up though. It wasn’t until my second hospital stay in September that I finally started getting answers. After going through more than my fair share of seizure like activity with absolutely no help from the doctors at all, my mom pulled some strings with her work in order to get me in with the best Neuro-Immunologist in Louisville. When I met with Dr. Sweeney, he finally explained to me what was going on with my health. Not only was I experiencing Multiple Sclerosis symptoms—numbness, tingling, memory loss, joint pain, and so on—he also told me I had CRION, Chronic Relapse Inflammatory Optic Neuropathy. Dr. Sweeney was able to put me on medication to dull my symptoms and prevent me from losing more eyesight. Now, I am not saying that my life is easier because of the medication, but it is absolutely more tolerable. I have adjusted to my new life and take the ups and downs with a grain of salt. It may be harder to do different activities, but I am living with it. I am living with a chronic disease, but it is not stopping me from living my life to the
You don’t see it coming and then all of a sudden you are blindsided. I was blindsided a year ago in April. I had difficulty seeing out of my left eye starting in February, but didn’t pay any attention to it. When I finally made an appointment with my ophthalmologist, the severity of my eyesight was worse than I thought it was. I was scheduled for an MRI to see if there was a tumor, spinal fluid, or anything to figure out why my optic nerve was swollen. Throughout the year, I had multiple tubes of blood drawn, including 17 at one time at the Cleveland Clinic, several road trips to get different opinions, two serious hospital stays, one painful spinal tap, way too many seizure-like activities—causing memory loss—, and nine MRI’s. Nothing was coming up though. It wasn’t until my second hospital stay in September that I finally started getting answers. After going through more than my fair share of seizure like activity with absolutely no help from the doctors at all, my mom pulled some strings with her work in order to get me in with the best Neuro-Immunologist in Louisville. When I met with Dr. Sweeney, he finally explained to me what was going on with my health. Not only was I experiencing Multiple Sclerosis symptoms—numbness, tingling, memory loss, joint pain, and so on—he also told me I had CRION, Chronic Relapse Inflammatory Optic Neuropathy. Dr. Sweeney was able to put me on medication to dull my symptoms and prevent me from losing more eyesight. Now, I am not saying that my life is easier because of the medication, but it is absolutely more tolerable. I have adjusted to my new life and take the ups and downs with a grain of salt. It may be harder to do different activities, but I am living with it. I am living with a chronic disease, but it is not stopping me from living my life to the