In this solo episode of The Invisible Illness Club Podcast, April breaks down the difference between acute and chronic illness with everyday examples and relatable metaphors. She explains why society easily rallies around a broken bone but struggles to grasp the lifelong challenges of chronic conditions. April also reflects on how chronic illness shapes relationships and stretches faith in ways acute illness rarely does. This conversation is for anyone living with a chronic condition—or anyone who loves and supports someone who is—offering clarity, validation, and hope.

💬 Memorable Quotes:

• “Acute illness is like a thunderstorm—it blows through. Chronic illness is like the climate you live in.”
• “Recovery with chronic illness isn’t an end point; it’s a cycle of good days and hard days.”
• “The best gift you can give someone with a chronic illness is your presence. Not a fix, but your prayers, love, and presence.”
• “Hope has been hard for me, but I’ve learned to hope for heaven where every tear will be wiped away.”

📖 Key Scriptures (if applicable):

• Revelation 21:4 – “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more…”
• Romans 5:3–4 – “…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance…”

💡 Reflection/Journal Prompts (optional):

• How do you see the difference between acute and chronic illness play out in your life?
• In what ways has chronic illness stretched your faith or reshaped your hope?
• How can you offer presence (not fixes) to someone you love with a chronic illness?

🚶 One Tiny Step for This Week:

Reach out to a friend with a chronic illness—simply to check in, pray for them, or let them know you’re there.

🛠️ Tools, Resources & Mentions:

• Join The Unseen Sisterhood newsletter → JOIN HERE
• Blog: The Invisible Weight of Chronic Illness
• Instagram: @the_invisibleillnessclub

👉 What has your experience been with acute versus chronic illness—for yourself or someone you love? How has it shaped your relationship with God? Send me a message and share your story—I’d love to hear it.

Transcription

So if you break your arm, people rally, but if you say you’re exhausted for the 10th week in a row, not so much. Today, I want to talk about acute illness or injury versus chronic what that means in real terms, but also what that means for us in the chronic illness community, stay tuned. Are you struggling to stay positive and hopeful while dealing with your chronic illness? Has your illness impacted your relationship with family and friends? Do you want to regain your sense of belonging and have more love and compassion for yourself? Welcome to the invisible illness club. If you’re ready to learn how to live a hope filled life with your chronic illness, grab your favorite drink and listen in. So today we’re talking about acute versus chronic and the definitions, but also what that looks like in real life. So an acute injury or illness has an end point. Right? You break a bone, it heals in six to eight weeks. It’s over. You have a cast on, right? You have appendicitis, you go to the hospital, have surgery, get it taken out, and then you know, 346, weeks, you feel better, right? It’s all done. It’s all over with. But chronic illness is a condition that affects every part of your life, every day of your life, and most likely, will never go away. The definition of chronic, right? Lifelong. So let’s look at this metaphor, in case you’re still trying to make sure you understand the difference between acute and chronic illness. Think of acute like a thunderstorm, when you hunker down and the thunderstorm is blowing through, and it maybe cuts the electricity or whatever. But the thunderstorm goes away, right? It doesn’t stay. It doesn’t hang out over your house and nobody else’s it goes away. It passes. The electricity comes back on. Life is good again, but chronic is kind of like the climate you live in, so it shapes everything. I live in Florida. I’ve also lived in Texas, climates about the same from where I’ve lived. It’s nice and warm and hot and muggy, and that is my climate. It’s what I live in every single day. It rarely ever changes, and it pretty much shapes everything that’s allowed to go in the ground, that grows, that is kept in your house or a storage unit that is chronic. Well, why do people often get acute mixed up with chronic why can’t they understand the difference when those simple examples and definitions kind of gave you a real clear view of the difference between chronic and acute, it’s hard for people to live with chronic stuff. We are a society of, I want it now. We are Society of, I want it to happen quickly and be done, and that plays out all across every ounce of what we do in our lives, so our friendships, work, church, family, we see all these different places in our life where acute becomes what most people want, and boy, do we want acute also, right? None of us want to live like this, but chronic is often what happens in our lives, and that takes a toll on the relationships that we have in our life. We have to manage these ongoing problems and the expectation that recovery is not really recovery, we can learn to live a little better and have medications and different options that can help us feel better, but we’re really not recovering the way an acute person would recover. If I had a broken bone and I had a cast on my leg, in about six to eight weeks, I’m going to be recovered from that broken bone, my bone will have reset itself, will put itself back into place, and my leg will feel great. But with chronic illnesses, MECFS, lupus, ankylosing spondylitis, pots, fibromyalgia, any of these different chronic illnesses, and there are too many to even begin to name, we are left with this constant battle up and down of recovery. I have really good days. I’m I guess you could call that a recovery day, right? I had a really good day. So I look and feel. Better, but tomorrow, because I might have pushed myself today, I might have a really bad day. It’s this up and down cycle that happens with chronic illness that takes a toll, not only on us. We know the toll it takes on us, but just to be clear, it takes a toll on the people around us as well. It’s a very big emotional toll, because it’s invisible. It’s hard sometimes for our family and our friends and the people that we work with to actually be able to see and understand that I might be sitting here with a smile on my face, but I’m actually really in a lot of pain, so that invisibility then leads on to potential judgment sometimes, well, why aren’t you better? Why are you still feeling like this? Aren’t you taking medication for that? Because something happens in our mind, where we forget that acute and chronic are actually two entirely separate definitions. And I’m not, I’m not making excuses for people who, you know, take that too far, and really, you know, hurt your feelings or or don’t want anything to do with you anymore, because that’s a whole different thing. But I do want to recognize, I want us to recognize that acute versus chronic, it’s harder in a society that is used to acute illness and acute injury, that is taught that illness and injury can be fixed and healed, even though we are finding out that some of those can’t, so we have to take that into account when we’re dealing with the people in our lives and what they’re dealing with watching this happen to us. The other thing that I want to talk about is is faith in this. So with an acute illness, you get cancer, but it’s a treatable cancer, okay? And it’s nobody ever dies from this cancer, all right, that is an acute illness, and it is very easy to grow a lot of faith really quickly in the middle of that crisis, or you got in a car wreck, you broke quite a few bones, but they are all going to set and heal themselves, and you will recover. That’s an acute injury, and it’s very easy again to grow a lot of faith in a very short time in a crisis the what do they say in the military, there’s a no atheist in a foxhole kind of a thing, right? We know that when something is a crisis in our lives, most of us will reach out to whatever we see God as and and cry out to the God of the universe. This is this is hard. I’m scared. This is something that needs to be fixed. God heal me, right? But with chronic illnesses and chronic injuries, this is something that stretches our faith. I know it has stretched my faith. It has caused me to learn and understand certain scriptures in a way that may have been different than what I I would have understood when I was younger, before dealing with all of this chronic illness, I have learned that God is there, even when he doesn’t heal me, even when he doesn’t take care of the things that are going on in my chronic illnesses and in my life, I’ve learned endurance. Oh, my goodness. I think we are probably one of the best examples of endurance in the health industry, because we have learned how to endure all of this and continue to keep going. I’ve learned patience for myself, for people around me. I’ve learned to put that in my mind that I was talking about earlier, where I have to remember that the people around me don’t understand this the same way that I do, and I’ve learned a lot of hope, which is hard for me. Hope has always been hard for me due to different things that have happened in my life, but I’ve learned that even if nothing changes here on Earth, that it will in heaven, that He will wipe away every tear, and my body will be a new body, and I will have no pain anymore. I’ve learned how to hope for that. So to those of you that are dealing with a chronic illness, understand. And that your heart is very valid, even if it doesn’t come with casts or stitches or anything like that. Also, for those of you that are listening, that support someone with chronic illness, or that know someone with chronic illness, I want to say that the best gift you can give that person is your presence. You can’t fix what they’re going through. There are no quick fixes for this, but you can give them your prayers and your love and your presence, and you can just be there for them when they need it. So that’s it for today’s podcast. I do have a question for you. I’d love to hear the answer to, what has your experience been with acute versus chronic for yourself and those around you, but also, what has this been like with your relationship with God? Be sure to shoot me a message and let me know.