At the age of twenty-four, a thousand miles away from my family, living in a new city, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Over a period of four weeks and about eight doctor’s visits, I finally found a physician who listened to me explain my symptoms and in less than two days I had a diagnosis.

Despite the terms “chronic” and “forever” I felt relieved to know the label that described my chronic pain. Few of my friends, however, shared my enthusiasm for a diagnosis. The managers at my office were more concerned about the fact that I wasn’t wearing heels to work anymore, making me look less professional.

They quickly threw comments about such as “You’re too young to feel this bad!” Most people were confused about the difference between rheumatoid arthritis and typical degenerative arthritis that our grandparents may suffer from. They ignorantly said things like, “There is no way that you can have arthritis yet.” Those that did try to offer sympathy compared my fatigued and pain to their sports injuries. “Yeah, I have some arthritis in my knee from football. You just have to keep pushing through the pain.” It wasn’t unusual to see their comments accompanied by the wave of their hand or their rolling eyes.

When you are diagnosed with a chronic illness while in your twenties, all typical decision making it thrown off schedule. This time in your life should be about choices for areas of education, a career, relationships, and even where you will live. Instead, all of these decisions are put on hold and you must make more life-changing choices – fast! How you accept (or do not) accept the diagnosis? What medications should you take? What is the risk of side effects and are worth it? How do you find the best doctor? We get a fast education on how to read lab test results, what forms of alternative treatments to try, and even when to let yourself have a good cry versus when to just bite your lip and hold the tears back.

As I tried to make each decision based on careful research, instinct, and “worse case scenario” situation, hearing someone flippantly say, “You’re too young to have that illness” felt like a slap in the face. Though a simple comment, my heart felt it deep, as if they assumed I was too ignorant or accepting of the doctor’s diagnosis. They implied that I needed to be more assertive and get a the “real” diagnosis of an illness that could be cured in a few weeks with a pill. After all, I couldn’t really be that sick, because I “looked so good.”

Laurie Edwards is the author of a great book called ‘Life Disrupted: Getting Real About Chronic Illness in Your Twenties and Thirties,’ She explains, “However infuriating and irrational such comments are, they only have the power to define or validate our conditions if we allow that to happen. There are all sorts of reasons why people find it easy to scorn or deny illness, especially in younger people who ’should’ look and act healthy.”

The saturation of advertisements on television and in magazine for prescription medications has helped legitimize some illness, such as rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. There are downsides, however. For example, everyone considers her self an expert on the, plus they make their assumptions about how well the drugs work based on the ads. The advertisements show people with debilitating illnesses (healthy models, actually) who are astonishingly now able to water ski or join their kids on 300-foot water slides. While a certain percentage of people may experience remission, the majority of us are happy to be able to get up out of bed without assistance, get dressed, and drive to the grocery store. Ads and commercials fail to alert people that though an illness may be temporarily controlled, they are usually associated with immense daily chronic pain.

With each chronic illness, most of which are invisible, people will doubt that your illnesses impacts your life as significantly as it does. If you are in your twenties or thirties, they will be even less likely to understand that feeling better requires much more than a good attitude or a little bit of exercise.