Nobody tells you that being seriously sick comes with its own inventory list.
Not the inspirational version people post online either. Not the soft beige “healing journey” aesthetic where someone with perfect lighting drinks celery juice in matching pajamas while journaling about gratitude.
I mean the real starter pack.
The one you build accidentally while your entire life slowly becomes held together by medication schedules, appointment reminders, and pure psychological warfare.
Mine started small.
A heating pad.
A pill organizer.
A giant water bottle.
Normal enough.
Then somehow it evolved into enough supplies to survive a minor apocalypse.
Now there are chargers in every room of my house because apparently my phone battery and I are both fighting for our lives. I own medical tape in multiple colors. There are alcohol wipes floating around my purse like loose glitter. Half my tote bags sound like maracas because they’re filled with pill bottles.
And every sick person eventually develops what I can only describe as “The Chair.”
The chair with the hoodie on it.
The medications near it.
The heating pad draped over it.
The emotional support blanket.
At some point that chair quietly becomes your headquarters.
You also become deeply passionate about things normal people never think about.
A good vein.
A fast pharmacy tech.
A doctor who actually calls back.
An anti-nausea med that kicks in before you start sweating in a hospital bathroom.
Honestly, if someone told seventeen-year-old me that one day I’d be rating IV nurses like Yelp reviews, I would’ve been horrified.
Now I’m like:
“Oh my god ask for Linda. One poke queen. Incredible bedside manner.”
Being sick long-term changes your personality in the weirdest ways.
You become capable of discussing horrifying medical things while casually eating mozzarella sticks. Your sense of modesty evaporates. At least twelve strangers have probably seen parts of your body while you apologized for not shaving your legs.
And the humor gets darker.
Not because you’re insensitive. Because if you don’t laugh, the reality of all this starts feeling too heavy to carry all the time.
So you joke.
You joke in infusion rooms.
You joke during scans.
You joke while holding terrifying paperwork.
Because sometimes humor is the only thing standing between you and completely unraveling in the Walgreens pharmacy line.
And underneath all the jokes is this really strange grief nobody prepares you for.
Not just grief for your health.
Grief for the version of you that existed before your life became medical.
The version who could make plans without calculating energy levels first. The version who didn’t know what insurance authorization meant. The version who could leave the house without carrying enough supplies to survive a natural disaster.
I miss her sometimes.
Not because I think she was better. Just because she was lighter.
People think illness is mostly about pain, but honestly? A lot of it is inconvenience layered on top of heartbreak.
It’s rescheduling your entire life around appointments.
It’s losing friendships because people get uncomfortable.
It’s realizing the world keeps moving while yours feels paused in a waiting room somewhere.
And it’s lonely in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it.
There’s something deeply isolating about becoming “the sick one.” Especially when you’re young. Especially when your peers are building careers, traveling, having babies, buying homes, and posting engagement photos while you’re googling whether a symptom is “normal” at 1:14 a.m.
Sometimes I feel eighty years old.
Sometimes I feel twelve.
And sometimes I feel weirdly grateful for things I never would’ve noticed before all this.
A day without pain.
Cold sheets after a fever.
Food tasting good again.
A normal lab result.
Mojo curled up beside me after a bad appointment like he personally pays the bills around here.
Those moments matter more now.
Tiny things became enormous after cancer stripped my life down to the studs.
And maybe that’s the part I keep trying to explain through all of this mess.
My life got smaller in a lot of ways. But somehow my ability to notice people, comfort, softness, humor, love, and survival got bigger.
Even now.
Even here.
Even with my emotional support tote bag full of medications and approximately six thousand receipts.
If you’ve been reading Mojo & The Mess, thank you for being here. Truly. This little corner of the internet has become so much bigger than cancer. It’s become community, honesty, dark humor, grief, survival, and people trying their best to keep going through messy lives.
If you want to keep following along, you can subscribe at Mojo & The Mess for new blogs, updates, resources, and the first look at some really big things coming soon.
Stay messy.
Life’s a mess. Keep going.
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