Guest Blog: The Challenges of Being a Teenager with a Chronic Illness, by Olivia Cyr

Today, I’m thrilled to have a guest blogger, Olivia Cyr. She is seventeen and lives with a few chronic conditions including dysautonomia, OCD, and anxiety. Olivia has been featured on The Mighty, and her perspective as a teenager dealing with these issues is important.


Being a teenager is hard. I don’t think that many would dispute that fact. Between boy/girl drama, friendship struggles, school, teachers, homework, a job for some, and more, teens often don’t get the credit they deserve for juggling all they have. 

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Dear Sick, Scared 2015 Me… A Letter to Someone Whose Illness Uprooted Their Life

Dear 2015 me,

I know you feel like a stranger in your own life right now while you’re the sickest you’ve ever been with PANS. I know you’re scared, lonely, and unsure if there will ever be anything more to your life than this illness that attacked your brain and kidnapped you from your own body. I know you feel invisible because of all the hours you’re trapped in your room and all the days when you’re trapped in a mind you no longer recognize. You feel unseen because no one knows how much it takes for you to accomplish what others take for granted.

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The Problem with Having an Anxiety Disorder AND Another Chronic Illness

“Just go to the lab,” the doctor says, handing me a long list of tests.

“I have a port,” I remind her. “You’ll have to send this to the infusion center since my veins are too scarred.”

She paused, mulling it over for a second. “Well, the lab is where you get blood drawn, so I’m sure someone there will help you.”

“But phlebotomists can’t access a port.”

“They’ll find someone,” she ushers me out of the office, leaving me to hang out and dry and ignoring farther warnings about what will happen to me if I go to the outpatient lab…

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Pure-O: The Kind of OCD We Need to Talk About

For six years, I kept a secret that I was determined to take to my grave. I pretended I wasn’t constantly afraid. I made excuses when asked about my unusual behaviors. I was so hell-bent on avoiding being found out that I did everything I could to fool every psychologist, therapist, and doctor I encountered. No one, including myself, knew for all these years that what I suffered from was Pure-O OCD, in the form of scrupulosity or religious OCD.

And the whole disaster started with one thought.

When I was eleven, while lying in bed, something along the lines of “F– G*d” popped into my brain. As the good-girl church acolyte that I was, I felt horrified. What did it mean that a sacrilegious thought like that could appear in my mind? I felt like I had to do everything I could to keep it from coming back or else that meant I was a bad person. I already felt incredibly guilty that it had happened even one time.

But as the days went on, the more I tried to resist thinking that thought again, the more often it happened and the more it evolved and mutated into increasingly offensive thoughts until they had some of the most explicit, blasphemous, sexual, and violent content imaginable. Everything I didn’t want to think, I ended up thinking. I fell into complete and utter despair.

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What Mental Health Awareness Means When Chronically Ill

As someone with a chronic illness that was once misdiagnosed as a psychiatric disorder, but who also does have mental health issues, it’s a constant balancing act trying to understand my brain while convincing doctors that mental illness is only one of my problems.

For eight years, the conclusion was that I was sick because I was depressed.  (Since when did depression cause visible joint inflammation?) Even as a kid, I knew better than to believe that.

I was only thirteen the first time a doctor misattributed my physical illness to my poor mental health, but I knew that I knew myself and my body better than a doctor who’d just met me:

“I’m not sick because I’m depressed,” I growled.  “I’m depressed because I’m sick.”

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Facing The What-If’s of Chronic Illness: Why Do Grad School While Sick?

Last month, after finishing my first semester of grad school, the dread of having to come back in January to do it all over again drowned out any sense of accomplishment.  Although I liked my colleagues, the truth is that I was miserable so much of that fall.  And until now, I didn’t know why.

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How I Tackle Grad School with Cognitive Problems from PANS

“How’s grad school going?” my friend from home asked.

“I mean—I’m glad I’m trying it,” I stammered, going on about a few highlights.

“But do you like it?” she pressed.

The truth is that I’d been afraid to ask myself this very question, because I was afraid to learn the answer….

But first, how is grad school going?

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10 Ways to Feel Less Hopeless When Chronically Ill

“I just can’t keep going.”

“I feel completely hopeless.” 

“How can anyone live like this?”

These messages come to my inbox nearly every week from kids and teenagers who think PANS or Lyme is the end of the life they once loved; from adults who’ve been fighting for years, unsure how much longer they can go through the cycle of relapse, treatment, and recovery; and even from parents who are tired of being too strong for too long.

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Why Therapy Isn’t Enough When You Have OCD & PANS/PANDAS

This week, I made the mistake of reading the PANDAS Wikipedia page, and now I’m boiling over:

“Treatment for children suspected of PANDAS is generally the same as standard treatments for [Tourette Syndrome] and OCD. These include therapy and medications…”
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My Disease Could Make Me Lose My Mind. Here’s How I’m Coping…

After eleven years of brain-related chronic illness, I’ve come to live in a constant state of uncertainty not only regarding my conditions, but regarding my entire life.

I never imagined I would ever get sick in the first place, let alone to then be sick for over a decade. The fact that my illness happened at all has taught me that no matter how certain you feel about your life, you can’t really know what the future holds. Continue reading “My Disease Could Make Me Lose My Mind. Here’s How I’m Coping…”