Living Life With CP — Brittney Clouse

Another year is starting and the family holidays are behind us. During those holidays, did your friends and family pull out old pictures of you and tell stories about different times in your life? Sometimes, tales about before you got sick or when you were “better?” In my case,…

The hardest part of living with a chronic illness is not the years you spend waiting for a diagnosis. It’s not the hundreds of doctor appointments and different specialists you see when you’re trying to get someone to listen to you and understand something is really wrong with you.

I’ve battled cerebral palsy my entire life. Then, when I was 17, I was diagnosed with chronic pain. And, in August of this year, I was diagnosed with anxiety. It seems that for every diagnosis I’ve received, I’ve viewed each as a thing that fits with my existing…

I believe there is a common misconception among the able-bodied that if you have a chronic illness, you probably have very good doctors whom you love. While that can be true in some cases, there also are some doctors we are just stuck with; they treat our…

I have wanted to write this column for a while, but it’s so hard to find the words to describe panic attacks or anxiety attacks. It’s even harder to write about this topic when I know that anxiety presents itself differently in everyone, brought on by different triggers…

Despite the fact that I was born with a chronic illness, unless I was actually ill with some sort of virus I’ve never had to take daily medications in the morning to start my day. But now that I’ve begun getting help for my anxiety, taking medication is…

If you’ve read anything about chronic illness, there’s a good chance you’ve come across the term “brain fog.” This term is used to describe feelings of confusion, forgetfulness and lack of mental clarity. People I’ve read about regard this phenomenon as a side effect of their medications,…

Twenty-one years ago today I was born, weighing one pound, 13 ounces, with a chronic illness — cerebral palsy. Today, my mom found a batch of old photos of me and I could see the ebb and flow of growing through my chronic illness. There were scenes…

As my occupational therapist lays me on the table to stretch my shoulder, she tells me she’ll likely have to put down her dog this weekend and that she’s unsure how to explain it to her young daughter. I relate by telling her my experience when we put…

Thinking back: I am just shy of 18-years-old. My mom and I have exhausted the ER staff of all of our local hospitals if not every day, every other day, for the past two years. My hip and my back now ache with the same pull-and-stretch feeling…

Thinking back: I am 16 years old. I sit in a cold ER with my mom on a September day. My mom and I are regulars at all  the local ERs because, for the past year, I’ve been struggling with a deep, nagging hip pain. It has made…

Some time ago I wrote a column talking about what it was like for a woman with cerebral palsy to seek birth control. I mentioned a few symptoms, like ankle pain and swelling of my breasts, and I expressed frustration at the lack of information I could find about…