Chronic illnesses are something that millions of people, including myself, have. Disability and long-term illness can be a struggle in daily living. While we do have good awareness for disabilities, we don't really have much for chronic illnesses. Why is it important to have awareness dates for chronic diseases? There are different reasons for this.
We do have awareness dates for long-term diseases like diabetes and Alzheimer's disease, which they are individually in dates for their awareness. However, we should have awareness for all the chronic illnesses together. Why don't we have that?
I have chronic kidney disease (CKD), diagnosed since April 2016, and also have valley fever and Asperger's syndrome. A disease like CKD is not well-known to the general public because of its silence. Long-term illnesses like arthritis, diabetes, autism, Alzheimer's disease, and AIDS do have more awareness and are so well-known to the public, but despite more people having chronic kidney disease like me than diabetes and much more than with AIDS, CKD isn't with awareness.
There is public awareness for valley fever (at least where I live in the western United States) and for Asperger's syndrome, but not much awareness for any form of chronic kidney disease.
For example, in the United States alone there are more than 125 million people like me with a chronic illness, but not as much awareness for all chronic illnesses together exists as for anyone with a disability. A good website for chronic illnesses and disabilities is http://themighty.com.
It is important to raise awareness on chronic illness to let others know how to respond to the needs of anyone on a long-term disease like myself. It is unbelievable to the people who are not on a chronic illness to be explained that the ones who are chronically ill are just always sick.
Chronic illnesses are diseases that last a long time and don't go away. Many of them, like the chronic kidney disease (CKD) that I have, are invisible which makes it harder to see with the naked eye, so it's even harder to diagnose and understand.
Let's make some chronic illness awareness dates for the whole world to observe on a single day, week or month, and also for each country or territory individually to observe on a specific day, week or month, as chronic illness can strike anyone and the whole world has chronically ill people in every country and territory.
