My boyfriend is amazing. And I have to say his kids have really stepped up to the plate. They're 17, 14 and 7, but have dealt really well with things like me being in the hospital over Christmas (2009).
About a week ago my bf walked into the living room and saw a strange look on my face and asked what was up. The middle kid looked at his father and said, "She's in pain! Leave her alone! Geeze, even I knew that!" It was teenage attitude, but meant so much.
I also have a wonderful friend (my younger teen and her older teen are dating - arg!) who has an obscure kidney disease. She goes to dialysis three times a week and understands dealing with pain, not being able to do all you want due to health issues and how much fun it is to go under the knife.
My Mom has Crohn's and seems to know when I need to be coddled and when I need a good kick in the bum. Living in a house with only one bathroom was a terrible thing, but we muddled through without having to use the bushes.
But with all these wonderful people in my life, Ellie takes the cake. When she was a teenager her father wasn't being much of a father. She was very unhappy and heading down a wrong track. Not drugs, sex or booze - her father was was a great bad example - just lazy, letting the world pass her, not looking to college or her future. I took her in and gave her all the parenting I could. At times she fought me - the whole 'You're not my Mom!' stuff, but a couple years ago she had an emotional Mother's Day. She wrote a long letter (on facebook) to every woman who helped her grow up. She ended it saying that I am her Mom. I'm just barely old enough to biologically be her mother, by like two months. Even though she's legally an adult, we're starting the adoption process. This means so much more to me because I made the decision when I was 16 that I wasn't going to have kids of my own. Looking through my maternal family is a who's who of Crohn's, IBD, IBS, etc. That this girl chose me to be her mom means so much more than I could ever explain.
One of the funniest (peculiar, not haha funny) is that Ellie had cancer when she was 4 years old. I think it was ganglioneuroblastoma. The removed her spleen, galbladder and the tail of her pancreas (which mostly grew back). But from all of that she has potty issues very similar to mine. We joke how I decided to not have any kids of my own, but I still ended up with a kid with screwed up insides. Even just thinking about her makes me smile. Thanks for starting this thread!