Blog Articles About Pain

My Favourite Books That Helped Me Live Better with Chronic Illness

This post may contain affiliate links. I have read voraciously for pleasure since I was a child. Somewhere along the way, I discovered that books can also educate, support, and help you figure out how to live in this world. This can be extra helpful when you live with a chronic illness and are flailing…

Read More

Your Life with RA Is On Sale!

It’s January, a month famous — infamous? — for being full of resolutions and decisions to take charge of your life. My Amazon Bestseller Your Life with Rheumatoid Arthritis: Tools for Managing Treatment, Side Effects and Pain is your perfect partner in the quest to become empowered and put yourself in the driver’s seat with…

Read More

6 Tips for Setting (and Working Towards) Goals Despite the Unpredictability of Chronic Illness

“That’s why you should never make plans,” she said. “You never know what might happen.” I used to be in that place. It’s a place where you are afraid of planning anything, because of the unpredictability of chronic illness. If you never know how you’ll feel tomorrow, even in an hour from now, forcing you…

Read More

#ChronicChristmas Gift Guide Day 12: Everyone Needs a Toolbox

  Image description: an illustration of a path through the forest. Next to the path sits a dog with a wounded pawl lifted. On the path is a penguin with a toolbox. Image has the number 12 placed in a tree and the hashtag #ChronicChristmas This is my daily Advent calendar of gift ideas for…

Read More

A Hotel That Heals: Le Germain Maple Leaf Square Review

The first hint that we weren’t in real life anymore was the name of the toilet. OK, so I’m sure it was the name of the brand of this kind of toilet (total? Really?), but it set the tone. I got kicked out of house and home the last week while a big part of…

Read More

Facebook Live: Guilt and Chronic Illness

So many of us feel so much guilt. As you know, I wrote a post about guilt — particularly writer guilt — a little while ago, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. So I took at the Facebook. In this month’s #AskLene, we talked about guilt, chronic illness, and how to let…

Read More

5 Great Blogs from RDBlog Week

Last week, 31 bloggers came together to write about rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or, as some prefer, rheumatoid disease (RD to reflect the systemic nature of the beast. Every day had a different topic and every day, I’d read through the entries, in awe of the talent and passion of all who participated. Here are five…

Read More

How a Pain Specialist Can Help Treat Rheumatoid Arthritis Pain

Living with rheumatoid arthritis means facing many challenges, one of which is getting effective treatment for pain. My latest article for HealthCentral looks at how a pain specialist can help: “Treating rheumatoid arthritis (RA) doesn’t begin and stop with a rheumatologist. RA is a complex systemic condition that can benefit from a team approach. A…

Read More

Marijuana for Pain: Does It Work?

I never smoked marijuana as a teenager. No, that’s not entirely true. Once, I took one puff, hardly inhaled, and called it quits. Fast-forward four years or so. By this time, we’d moved to Canada, I was in university and we lived in a wonderful house with a backyard adjacent to a ravine. The guy…

Read More

The Path to better Treatment: 5 Tips to Get What You Need

“We have to do whatever we can to help our patients function.” – My rheumatologist Both my rheumatologist and my family doctor support my need for treatment that enables me to live my life. That includes prescribing opioids, steroid shots, or thinking outside the box to find solutions. I know that makes me a lucky…

Read More

Dealing with Pain in a Non-Medical Way: an Interview with Sarah Anne Shockley

  Sarah Anne Shockley is the author of The Pain Companion: Everyday Wisdom for Living With and Moving Beyond Chronic Pain. It’s a wonderful book with lots of great tips that can help you deal with pain in a compassionate and gentle way. I had the opportunity to interview the author via email about her…

Read More

August #AskLene: Living and Coping with Pain

This afternoon, during my monthly #AskLene, we talked about living with pain and coping with pain. We had a really lively discussion that is continuing on the Facebook post. Do you have a topic you’d like me to talk about in future forecasts? Please leave it in the comments

Read More