Not quite illness, but I'm still here, after surviving a 500Lbs SVBIED blast in Afghanistan. ~300 surgeries/10yrs later, I'm sitting here trying to become a product engineer while dealing what could be construed as hurdles:

-Massive insomnia. I try to meditate, read tech news and listen to Javascript lectures. I can't reliably schedule meetings in the morning due to sometimes not falling asleep until 6-7am. Hack your environment to remove blue light.

-Pain. Basically, my only available option is narcotics, which I refuse to take for obvious reasons. Meditation, acupuncture helps.

The stress comes from how others react to me. They don't see the behind the scenes, so I'm just some young, rather unprofessional-looking guy, making halfway attempts. I chose to ignore that completely, because at the end of the day, none of these people are helping the situation in any way.

It surely helps to have a never-ending will to go forward, on step at a time.

One piece of advice I would give is to focus on positive stuff. It's all too often very easy to find the negatives. Don't take the easy route.