Information

Spoonie has a minion!

Dance the Death Trot

Spoonie

The

Graveyard Terracoon
Owner: Dracona

Age: 8 years, 1 week, 1 day

Born: May 12th, 2018

Adopted: 4 years, 6 months, 1 week ago

Adopted: November 10th, 2021

Statistics

Level: 80
Strength: 151
Defense: 22
Speed: 11
Health: 12
HP: 13/12
Intelligence: 270
Books Read: 248
Food Eaten: 0
Job: Certified Mad Scientist

Have you heard of the Spoon Theory?

I'll assume you haven't, just in case. Many haven't heard of it. But it's a great way to help healthy people to understand others with chronic illnesses. The Spoon Theory website has been down a while but you can access the full story in the pdf document below from the Lymphoma Action site.

Spoon Theory story by Christine Miserandino

Basically it explains how we all get a certain amount of "spoons" (units of energy) at the start of the day. However, people with chronic illness have a lot less spoons than healthy people. Healthy people might have 40 spoons, but ill people might have only 5. If showering, cooking, cleaning, socialising all take 2 spoons each, you can see where a chronically ill person will have to choose what to do. Work would be perhaps 10 or 20 spoons!

You can borrow them from the next day, but it means that next day you have less spoons. Instead of 5 you might only have 3. So no socialising and perhaps cheese slices or chicken nuggets for dinner. Some days have more spoons than others, depending on pain level, amount of sleep, and difficulties to overcome. Stress, anxiety, and not being believed (frustration) makes symptoms worse.

Chronic Illness can take many forms. It's usually permanent or extremely long lasting (think years). Most people are used to those in wheelchairs. But did you know that a lot of people in wheelchairs can actually stand and walk? But illnesses can make their muscles weak so they cannot walk more than a few steps, or they have a severe fainting disorder, where walking in shops is too dangerous. Plus MANY chronic illnesses are invisible. Meaning there is no way by just looking at a person that you can know they have a life changing illness. Some people get verbal abuse because of this because some people choose to not believe they have anything wrong. This is dangerous ground because at any moment, healthy people may join the ranks of the chronically ill.

Here is the Wiki description and a fairly comprehensive list of Chronic Illnesses if you're curious.

More about Chronic Illness.