Maysoon Zayid Quotes

The biggest problem has been exhaustion. I've spent about 6 of the last 14 years completely bedridden.

I've never experienced chronic pain myself, but I have known many people over the years who have.

It's all been a blessing, just being able to focus on my health and redouble the efforts on recovery. It's been a long path. I still have chronic pain.

My illness is excruciating and difficult to cope with. It takes over your entire life and causes more suffering than I can describe.

In my experience, depression was not something that has been cured so much as managed, like a lot of illnesses.

Sometimes my body wakes me up and says 'Hey, you haven't had pain in a while. How about pain?' And sometimes I can't breathe, and that's hard to live with. But I still celebrate life and don't give up.

It's very difficult to advocate for yourself while you're in excruciating pain.

I just want to say to anybody out there who suffers with chronic pain, I feel you. It takes over your life. It affects you emotionally, mentally, physically.

It's not like I'm not constantly dealing with a litany of injuries that I have myself. If it's not one thing, it's another thing, but I've just been able to keep rolling.

There is very little magic in the world of the chronically ill.

When I was 25, it was painful. I was getting out of bed in the morning and couldn't walk. But when you are young, you don't care; it will pass. But one year after another, it's like, 'Come on, give me a break!'

Reality is I'm sick all the time.

I'm 58 years old and I just went through 8 back surgeries. They started cutting on me in February 2009, and I was basically bed ridden for almost two years. I got a real dose of reality that if you don't have your health, you don't have anything.

Overcoming the obstacle of my diabetes diagnosis was something that forced me tackle the challenge head-on and, with an amazing support system, eventually come out stronger.

I have been suffering for so long and didn't even recognize it. I just stopped doing so many things that I used to love to do due to my pain.

I was seeing everything through pain. I would roll out of bed and do my exercises. I had to do that to work out the remainder of the pain pills. I would drink coffee and go to the set and plunge myself so far into my work.

I have been dealing with illness and its manifestations since I was a teenager, and I think that gives me a very healthy respect for the things in life we can't control.

I think many people with a chronic illness would prefer not to have their chronic illness, simply because it's high maintenance.

I went to a Gestalt therapist and said that I want to be able to at least tell my muscles that aren't involved that they don't have to go into spasms too.

People believe that if you can shut your Tourette's off for a period of time, then you can always shut it off. I try to explain to people that if I spent my whole life trying to control my tics, that's all I would have time for.

We know well and we know chronically ill, but there is a whole bunch of gray in between where I think we can heal people before they become chronically sick. I believe our thoughts make us sick.

Two weeks, maybe three. You never know with psychosomatic injuries You have to take your time with them.

In my 20s I was in constant pain from undiagnosed endometriosis. With no prospect of a cure, I decided I needed a career - writing - that could accommodate being ill.

2014 was physically a tough year because I injured my knee, and you know how that goes with your emotions and the mentality.

Living with Tourette's is not easy.