Chronic illness insights, tips & resources

I’m Katya. Here I share my experiences of everyday life, travel and motherhood with multiple chronic illnesses - along with the practical things that help me manage.

TRAVEL

Making travel possible with chronic illness, from planning to accessible trips abroad

RESOURCES

Free guides, templates and checklists to make navigating life a little easier

DAILY LIFE

Everyday adaptations, managing symptoms and finding what works for our bodies

MY STORY

From diagnosis to Positively Chronic_ and everything that's happened along the way

MOTHERHOOD

Pregnancy, birth and figuring out motherhood with chronic illness

CONTACT

Questions, collaborations or just want to say hello? I'd love to hear from you!

positivelychronic_

_ travels, life, motherhood with chronic illness
🔗 Resources on my website
Formerly positivelychronictravels

https://www.positivelychronictravels.com/instagram-bio

To let people know they are not alone, pop a 🧡 in the comments if you have MCAS

Which adaptations have worked well for you? Everyone with MCAS is different but your experience might help someone else who is struggling. Did we miss anything important? Let us know in the comments 💬

To learn more about Mast Cell Activation Syndrome and / or for some resources of inspiration for awareness content so you can make some noise this upcoming awareness day (20th October 2026) comment "MCAS" and we'll DM you a link 🔗

7 things I learned after spending 2 weeks in the hospital for giving birth 🤰 as someone living with multiple chronic illnesses

I've made a free full guide with packing lists, everything I wish I knew, templates, playlists and more... to make your birth prep more streamlined if you have any complex health issues

just comment GUIDE and I'll share the link with you 🔗 💞🥰

Drop a 💜 in the comments if this resonates...

Understanding the Unpredictability of Chronic Illness Symptoms 〰️📈📉 in comparison with the weather 🌤️🌪️

Opening up in a very vulnerable way about my birth story that felt like a two week rollercoaster🎢 👀

With multiple lifelong chronic illnesses and experiencing chronic pain on a daily basis would you believe I was actually really EXCITED for labour 😂🙃

I wanted to FEEL the pain to compare with daily life and try to increase my future pain tolerance and so opted for no pain relief... 🤦‍♀️

Now you know what happened... there's SO much I learned along the way that I'll be elaborating on here in more detail on soon, alongside more on daily life with a baby plus managing several chronic health conditions at the same time 🧡

In the meantime you can access all the info on my full free website resource on birth prep with a complex health condition by commenting "GUIDE" and I'll DM it straight to you 💞 hope it's useful 😘

I'm really curious though - was this rare or has anyone experienced anything somewhat similar...? Feel free to share your experience if you're open to it 🫶

➡️ third trimester photo dump from the last weeks before going in for induction at 38 weeks...

Stay tuned for my birth story that I'm gonna open up about super duper soon 💞

[my school girlies hosting an incredible baby shower for me 🚿 👶]

"you don't look pregnant" 🤰😂

relaxing baths with a ceiling projector (highly recommend) 🛁

squeezing in lots of pre baby double dinner dates - ft. my seat at the recliner because it hurt too much to sit vertical in a chair

(something I already actually often do with my chronic illness and EDS making my coccyx and hips constantly dislocate/subluxate!)

6 weeks of antenatal classes to prepare all things baby (they were amazing but *spoiler* there is never enough you can prep 😅)

seeing if medjool dates helped to ripen my cervix (spoiler - it didn't work) 😂

meticulous organisation of so many hospital bags with so much prep for a stay with MCAS and allergies - it took up a WHOLE bedroom

SO much to share on this - I'll elaborate on separate posts but let me know any specifics you wanna know about?

obsessively cleaning tiles, a nesting sign I think many pregnant women experience 👀

📌 🧽 this electric scrubber is amazing to avoid bending down and equally useful for chronic illness and EDS daily life

raspberry leaf tea and birthing ball 🎱 🫖

trying to naturally induce in all possible ways 😆

I thought the ball would hurt my coccyx and slip my hips out of place but it was surprisingly pleasant and pain relieving!

lots of sleep with added afternoon naps

= not much different to life before pregnancy with tons of rest needed due to all the chronic illness symptoms 😅💤

me hosting a baby shower with another group of girlies - I LOVE putting on a spread 🍇

testing my blood sugars 5x per day for gestational diabetes that was diagnosed really late at 36 weeks

I don't know why they only test certain groups (like people with a direct relative with diabetes) because it meant mine was not caught until sooo late 🤯

gentle daily walks (or sunset walks if it was too hot) and lots of rest around that

the same as my routine pre-pregnancy! = lots of rest + one little walk a day

trying to calm my nervous system (ft

🏥🎢 After 2 weeks in the hospital and a rollercoaster ride of a birth that we never could have expected, our newborn baby is finally now safe and sound with us at home 🏡

Utterly filled with gratitude as we've been soaking up the magical newborn bubble settling into this new chapter of life as the three of us these last few weeks 🫧

People might not realise how much constant medical advocacy is needed when you have such a range of complex heath conditions 📝😮‍💨

Along the way I prepped a ton of shareable resources for labour and birth, with a whole protocol for just surviving admission in a hospital with MCAS and allergies 📑🧳

In the end there were still so many extra things we learned from it 💭

and also of course I want to open up about our full birth story with what actually happened... 👩‍🍼

...essentially I have so much to elaborate on from the experience that I'll be sharing on here properly as soon as I'm ready 💞 much love 🫶

Currently ready to pop 🤰🤭 but throwback to our wedding day with many things that helped make my wedding morning and day more accessible with chronic illness 💍🌿

I’m SO grateful that my health was genuinely good on the day, BUT there were also a lot of things I put in place to make that more probable...

Because getting through a full wedding day with EDS, MCAS, migraine, PoTS, chronic pain, fatigue & allergies meant thinking about pacing, sensory input, fragrance, food, mobility, comfort and symptoms from the moment I woke up

Some of the things that helped:

🛌 an early night & dinner in the room the evening before
🌅 waking up slowly on my own
🧘‍♀️ meditating in bed before the day began
☕️ a quiet cup of tea on the balcony
🚫 sitting out of dinner plans the night before, even though 100 guests were there
💆‍♀️ craniosacral therapy in my room the morning of
🍳 room service breakfast while my hair was being done
👰‍♀️ a separate living room for bridesmaids to get ready in, so I didn’t get overstimulated
💄 doing my own usual scent-free makeup (nothing fancy) with nothing new or reactive
🎶 calming handpan music throughout the morning
🔴 20 minutes on my red light therapy mat for my back
🚕 a 30 second taxi to the venue instead of a 10 minute walk in the heat
👜 bridesmaids carrying a giant essentials bag with meds, supports and my coccyx cushion
🩴 bouncy plastic Birkenstocks instead of heels, because comfort is KEY
🌸 asking guests not to wear fragrance
🙅‍♀️ no hugs for me, and no hugs for Rob until after the first kiss

These might sound small, but together they made a huge difference!

📌 This is what accessibility can look like: planning ahead, setting boundaries, adapting traditions, asking for help and choosing comfort over what’s “expected”

It was the wedding of my dreams, but it was also a wedding designed around what my body needed 🫶

If you’re new here, hey I’m Katya & I created @positivelychronictravels to share about my experiences living and travelling with multiple disabling chronic illnesses

If you’ve had a wedding, big event or special occasion wit

Come with us on our last trip out the house into London before baby arrives... 📍

To a spectacular wedding present from bestie @lucys.morgan @_purehealing_ 🥹🎉🥰

We both have EDS and co-morbidities (MCAS, PoTS, Gastroparesis etc) bur with different access needs so I elaborate more on the venue suitability in this video 🎬

Ep 4: moving and building renovations protocol for MCAS, allergies and asthma

More detail on what this all looked like as part of my new chronic illness & pregnancy series 🤰

British hotels are sadly always carpeted, fabric-y and air bnb's use scented laundry detergents I'm SO allergic to...

so living in a building site was technically medically safer, plus with mobility issues made most sense to manage the trades coming in and out days a week out for 3-4 weeks 🏗️

PSA this Disability Pride Month about priority seating, @transportforlondon please offer me a seat campaign and a reminder that invisible does not equal imaginary 💙

A wheelchair can give one mobility disabled person freedom and still not be the right support for another mobility disabled person.... thought I'd elaborate on this during Disability Pride Month this July 🫶

You see.... I tried out an electric wheelchair for daily use because my conditions do affect my mobility 🦼

I have Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which means my joints can partially or fully dislocate - and most of them are constantly going in and out meaning I can walk one moment then maybe can't the next

So from the outside, it might seem obvious:

“If walking is hard, why not just use a wheelchair?”

But, it isn’t as simple as that for some:

Bumpy pavements and cervical instability mean a wheelchair can flare other symptoms like motion sickness & vestibular migraine, so instead of giving me more freedom when I can’t walk, it can actually make me feel WAY worse 😵‍💫🤢🥴

That’s why I DO use airport mobility assistance, where the floors are super smooth and the distances are far too long for me to walk while carrying my medical bags (I frequently dislocate joints when walking carrying bags) 💼

But in daily life, because the environment around me, aka streets and pavements, isn’t accessible in the way my body needs, I’m home 99% of the time instead 🛋️

📌 Two people can both have conditions that affect their mobility and need completely DIFFERENT support

An example shown with my bestie @lucys.morgan @_purehealing_ in the first clip, who has the exact same hEDS diagnosis, but doesn’t have cervical instability, vestibular migraine or motion sickness

What works for ONE disabled person may not work for ANOTHER 💞

And that doesn’t make either experience LESS VALID

Mobility support is not one-size-fits-all 📢

If you’re new here, 👋 I’m Katya and I share about my experiences with life, travel, pregnancy (and very soon motherhood) while managing several chronic illnesses 🥰

What aid, support or “obvious solution” have people assumed would help you, but actually doesn’t suit your body? Feel free to comment to educate others this Disability Pride 🗣️

👋 I'm a Katya and on @positivelychronictravels I share generally about my experience living and travelling with chronic illness - here's a backstory about my journey to diagnosis...

Starting with what things looked like in my childhood and some things that happened in my twenties that had a knock-on effect a led to diagnosis with multiple disabling chronic health conditions (video continued in part 2...)

Do I look disabled?!

BEFORE you answer that (and especially this Disability Pride Month) I’m going to remind you that disability doesn’t have a certain appearance 👀

If you thought for a moment it did, then I’d love to invite you to re-learn your previous perspectives in my upcoming series educating on this topic

Rather than click away because you don’t know enough, don’t wanna know, or got it wrong consider the opportunity to learn and inform yourself

if you’ve watched this far THANK YOU - feel free to follow along if you're new here and stay tuned for this super important series where we’ll look to erase ableism 🗣️ 🤍

🎥💬 The video I sent all my wedding guests for our abroad wedding on our WhatsApp chat - to notify them of my MCAS / allergies and the protocols I'd be putting in place

Instead of a long message I recorded this to give more context and actually explain and help them understand the odd and very non conventional boundaries I need to set to minimise risks of reactions due to Mast Cell Activation Syndrome 🧡

I feel like helping people understand in more detail and actually learn a bit about the condition, why you weren't like this before and why protocols may be different to usual etc is often a great way to advocate 🗣️ so it's not an irrational request and they can empathise with your WHY

Quick car/taxi safety reminder 🚕

Always check the headrest when you get into a car or taxi.

Headrests are there for general safety, but so often they’re pushed all the way down or not positioned in a way that actually supports the back of your head and neck.

For most people, this is worth checking anyway.

🦴 But if you have neck issues, cervical instability, EDS, migraine, chronic pain, whiplash history or anything that makes your neck more vulnerable, it can matter even MORE.

For me, moving transport can be a big trigger because of braking, bumps, speed bumps, sudden turns and jerky movements… I have a connective tissue disorder called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome which comes with Cervical Instability, where the bones in my neck can partially dislocate

So before we set off, I always ensure to lift or adjust the headrest so it actually supports my head and neck as much as possible

TEENIE DETAIL YES, but it takes a few seconds, and it can make the journey feel safer and more supported

Obviously every car is different, and you want it positioned comfortably and safely rather than just lifted for the sake of it, but it’s such an easy thing to forget - so just a gentle reminder 📌

Do you check the headrest when you get into a car or taxi?

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About

Hi, I'm Katya!

I'm the creator of Positively Chronic_, a platform where I share my experiences, insights and resources about navigating life with multiple disabling chronic illnesses.

I started this little corner of the internet back in 2020, after being diagnosed with several complex health conditions in my twenties and spending over a year meticulously researching how I could make travelling possible again.

Back then it was Positively Chronic Travels, documenting the enormous amount of preparation, adaptations and advocacy involved in travelling with chronic illness, alongside everything I'd learnt about managing daily life.

But six years on, life has changed SO much!

From navigating the ongoing challenges of chronic illness and creating a flexible career, to getting married, moving into an accessible home and more recently becoming a mum for the first time, there's been a whole lot more to share.

So I've dropped the 'Travels' and left a little blank at the end with an underscore, because chronic illness is something that affects every part of life, and I want this space to reflect all of it.

Positively Chronic_ Life. Travel. Motherhood...

plus whatever comes next!

I hope that by sharing my experiences, the adaptations I've made and all the resources I've created along the way, I can help make navigating life with chronic illness a little easier for somebody else.

Perhaps show that even when life looks very different from what we'd originally imagined, there's still so much to experience, enjoy and look forward to

READ MY STORY →