Announcing #ChronicJourneys: My New Talk Show
Getting to know others and hearing their stories is one of my favourite things, ever. There are so many fascinating people who have found ways to live with and around rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and other types of chronic illness and I want to talk to all of them! About how they manage their condition, but…
Thoughts on Guilt and Rheumatoid Arthritis
Guilt and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) go hand-in-hand. It goes something like this: You made plans. Sometimes big plans, sometimes small. Then you wake up to a day when your RA has decided to be extra — extra painful, extra flare-y, extra getting in the way of your life — and there’s only one thing to…
10 Perfect Gifts for People with Chronic Illness
Updated November 20, 2021 People with chronic illness are just like anyone else — they have a variety of interests and passions that you can consider when planning a present. But choosing a gift that shows you understand and support their health challenges can mean so much. Here are 10 perfect gift ideas for your…
8 Practical Ways You Can Help Someone with Chronic Illness
When you have a chronic illness, asking for help can feel like a mine field. Likewise, if you want to help someone you care about who has a chronic illness, offering it has its own challenges. But finding a way to help and accept help can start to build bridges of understanding, of connection, and…
Sisters, Friends, and Sister-Friends
I used to think that friendship was built in person. The internet taught me differently when it gifted me my tribe of a chronic illness community. In my tribe the, the wise woman is Cathy Kramer. Cathy and I met ten or so years ago, when she started writing for HealthCentral, and we kept being…
What We Need From Others When We’re in Pain
Image description: rear view of two women sitting on a bench by a harbour. One woman is resting her head on the other’s shoulder. Pain is invisible. Which makes it hard to explain, and difficult for others to understand. I talked to the chronic pain community on Twitter and Facebook and they shared what they…
Shortcuts, Traveling, and Loss
Alcatraz, 1992 At some point in the ICU, I had a transcendent experience. Buzzing with excitement, I waited for The Boy to arrive for his daily visit and then told him all about it. That as soon as I was better, the first major adventure we were going to have was to go to Giraffe…
Mary
Mary and Ginger. Photo by Ralph Blakely, IIII don’t remember exactly when and why Lynn introduced me to her cousin Mary. I think it had something to do with Mary being diagnosed with RA and Lynn thinking that we’d hit it off. So we emailed and then we called each other and yes, indeed. We…
11
“Because of you, the sun shines brightly here.” That’s a quote from last year’s blogiversary post, posted exactly a year ago today. In it, I wrote about the amazing improvement it won’t take me 10 years to get back to normal in my health, strength, and stamina in the 10 years I had been blogging….
I Can See Clearly Now: A Memory of My First Glasses
I have friends who also got glasses when they were children and who tell similar stories. Of realizing that there are leaves on trees, that grass is composed of little individual blades. Unless you have existed in a world that’s blurred and thought it normal, I don’t think you can imagine the shock and the…
Learning to Undress My Stress
Something had to change. When I went to the ER in an ambulance for a suspected heart attack for the second time in eight months, it was clear that something wasn’t right. When I, for the second time in eight months, was diagnosed with nasty GERD mimicking the symptoms of heart attack, it was time…