Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Crohn's, Colitis, etc). People here bowel and think "Oh, that's just that pooping illness" but internal bleeding, intestinal obstructions, massive amounts of pain, ulcers... it's not an easy ride even for mild cases.-u/sticks1218

Asthma. People stop breathing. Tv and movies like to show it as a way of identifying a weakling, but it is a serious, deadly disease. It is also super not fun.Until my mid-20s I was hospitalized at least 2x a year because my emergency inhaler wasn't enough to make me start breathing again. I bought my own nebulizer, and it is the only reason I haven't been hospitalized since.-u/AtheneSchmidt

Eczema. People think its just itchy skin but it can be horrendously damaging-u/WitAndSavvy

Type 1 diabetes. I generally downplay it to "I can just take insulin and can eat whatever I want" because it's easier than explaining I'll be playing a game of Flappy Bird the rest of my life where if I get the dosage wrong I can die immediately and without warning, where if I don't have insulin for 3 days I die a horrible painful death, and if I ignore it I can go blind and lose the ability to digest food. And all the fucking beeping devices, all day every day. It's beeping at me right now.Oh, and insulin costs $600 a month, so that's cool.-u/CrackSammiches

All the autoimmune diseases. The amount of pain suffered is incomprehensible. The medications can be brutal with side effects, and can cause other issues. The impact on families and the mental health of the patients is almost always negative. Most of the diseases are degenerative, and there is no cure for any of them.-u/mykidsarecrazy

Tinnitus. It literally drives people to commit suicide to stop the ringing.-u/beasterne7

Deaf/HOH backstory: both sides of my family have back hearing backgrounds. My father is deaf and my mom's side just has bad hearing in general. I had good hearing most of my life until I was about 14ish. Discovered I have progressive hearing lose and I’ll eventually go completely deaf. It just sucks cause It’s so hard to communicate and do most things like a normal person and most people don’t understand that. For example when I ask someone to repeat myself and they say “ what are you deaf?” Yeah, I f*cking am.-u/Proper-Type7899

As a narcoleptic: people tend to think it's funny/quirky that I will fall asleep randomly but get all serious when I'm suddenly lying asleep in the middle of a crossroad.-u/evoli21

Parkinson's. It is a whole lot more than just shaky hands-u/electrishian

ShinglesIt can infect your eye and cause blindness. It can cause such severe pain and debility, you require long term nursing care (nursing home). Shingles is horrible.-u/Secret_Choice7764

Anorexia nervosa gets joked about a lot, but the survival rate is actually quite poor.-u/Secret_Choice7764

GERD. Can't count the number of people who say I just "get stomachaches sometimes" or "everyone gets heartburn". I have esophageal scarring and have a restricted diet just so I don't spend days in agony because I decided to drink a sprite. I had a feeding tube attached to my stomach for years because I couldn't swallow and everything irritated my esophagus. My concerns weren't taken seriously by doctors and I spent two weeks in a hospital struggling to convince them I wasn't anorexic. Even my voice is affected, I sound raspy to various degrees all the time.-u/PeculiarInsomniac

Migraines and cluster headaches. We might look okay on the outside, but it's completely debilitating. I lose a lot of my life to head pain, as I mainly work and lay in bed. I have lost touch with a lot of friends and family members due to last-minute cancelation plans.

Some days, it's so bad I want to drill a hole in my head to release the pain. Clusters are worse. This is why I'm not a gun owner. It really sucks with this condition; it's really not considered a disability. So I have to force myself to work to live, but forcing it makes it worse, so the quality of life really sucks. I have to warn new coworkers that if I start slurring, talking funny, or can't find words, I'm not drunk and not having a stroke.

I know there are tons of horrible diseases out there, so I try to tell myself it could be worse. It also really sucks when someone tells you to suck it up because it's just a headache. Ok, sorry, rant over.-u/turtle-girl420

Restless Legs Syndrome. Yes it is real, and yes it disrupts one's life, especially the ability to sleep. Lack of sleep then leads to a whole host of other conditions.-u/Mymoggievan

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Took my husband from an active, healthy, intelligent man to barely able to get out of bed. Terrible brain fog and many other debilitating symptoms. It is not just being tired.-u/Motor_Relation_5459

Hypothyroidism. People think it just makes you fat, but if your thyroid stops working it can wreck your life. So many bodily functions are controlled by your thyroid. Every weird symptom I had for years can be explained by my thyroid going out, from years-long exhaustion to depression to my hair falling out to muscle aches to anemia to shortness of breath to brain fog to intermittent double vision. There are more. Those are just the most prominent ones for me.-u/PetLemur

My friend had an endometriosis case so severe, that it created webbing that was wrapped not only around her uterus and Fallopian tubes, but also was beginning to wrap around her intestines. While it’s incredibly painful on its own, it would get worse when she ate. I may be describing this incorrectly, but the doctors told her as she was digesting her food, it would pull on the “webbing” which caused the cramping to intensify. So did having bowel movements. She was in agony until the surgery to remove it. She lost so much weight because eating caused her so much more pain.-u/SomewhereinOregon

Dental abscess. A lot of people don't realize that dental infections can kill you if they spread throughout your body.-u/DeathSpiral321

A nurse in my hometown committed suicide a few months after giving birth. She had been treating her Postpartum Depression the whole time and could never get the correct meds. It was very shocking to a lot of people who didn’t know what she was going through.-u/hawgfan1983

Dementia. It’s not just “Haha grandma woke up today and thought somebody stole her purse but she had hidden it,” or “Come on Dad, just look at the picture carefully and you’ll remember it’s your grandchildren and great-grandchildren in it.” There are so many behaviors, they get violent, they elope in the middle of the night or day, they lose their entire identity. They go back into not knowing how to care for themselves. It is extremely heartbreaking to watch the process. Especially with Lewy Body Dementia. They’re getting younger and younger nowadays and they tend to decline at a much faster rate.-u/nollyson

Snoring Often a sign of something more serious, like apnea, which can impair cognitive function, cause weight gain, and trim years off your life.-u/BudgetHero

How about OCD. People think it just makes them quirky and particular. I've seen it where people end up harming themselves, and can't function in society.-u/ooo-ooo-oooyea

Anxiety. One time I told someone I had anxiety and they said “at least you don’t have depression”-u/DolphinPlayz123

Usher’s Syndrome

It’s a syndrome that affects vision, hearing and balance. I’m a sufferer and I was born deaf, my vision is degrading, and I inherited it from my mother who has severe tunnel vision and a blurry vision in one of her eyes.

People often refuse to believe that I’ll be blind later in life. They also refuse to believe my mother is registered blind since blah blah she still can see. It’s an awful syndrome and limits me from certain activities

-u/owentattoosdrugz

The jokes about it never being lupus. It's surprisingly common and can be incredibly disabling.

-u/mimacat