After the diagnosis of a medical condition, an awful lot goes through your head. 'Why me", 'What now', 'Can I still do...'  being among them. Whatever the situation there are a number of things to now consider. Your medical professional is probably helping with many, but he or she can't help with all. What are the things you can do to get the ball rolling?  The first thing to do is lose a sense of blame. Illness happens. Sometimes it's genetic, sometimes it's random bad luck, sometimes we contribute (smoking for example). But it has happened, blame solves nothing, achieves nothing and in fact, sends you backwards. We'll all react differently, but these people  give some interesting life lessons out of how they coped with illness in their child. Not over-researching on the internet is one of them - you're guaranteed to find horror stories and that does no one any good.

Tell people about the illness. They can help and sometimes,if you fall ill suddenly, they'll need to help. If they don't know about your condition, chances are they'll get any help wrong! A medical id or medical bracelet is ideal for many conditions (allergies for example, or the drug treatment you require and where you keep it).

Let strangers and medical staff know quickly with a medibands and remember, if you have an allergy you can't tell people about it if you're unconscious, so think seriously about medical alert bracelets.

No doubt you want to continue life as you know it. No problem - so long as that didn't contribute to the life you now have to master! Is there an organisation for your illness? Whatever country you live in, there's likely to be an umbrella organisation like these guys. Join them, support them with donations and use their reference material to work out the changes to your life you need to make - and the ones you can get away without making. There's likely a forum, too, where you can meet others in the same situation.

Give yourself the ability to laugh. It won't kill you, and it will lighten the immediate load. Humour makes you step back. It gives a different perspective. You're in a ridiculous situation; take a look at the ridiculous side of life!

Give yourself some perspective. Someone, somewhere is worse off than you. This is not to trivialise your condition; it's to broaden your view. After all, you could have caused this.  At least everyone around you loves you!