#ChronicChristmas Gift Guide Day 8: Personal Pain Relief
Description: Raised arms, a pair of handcuffs released from the left and against a blue sky. Image has the number 8 is a puzzle piece and the hashtag #ChronicChristmas This is my daily Advent calendar of gift ideas for people with chronic illness, running from December 1-25. Some entries will contain affiliate links. Treating chronic…
How Massage Can Help Rheumatoid Arthritis
Keeping rheumatoid arthritis pain under control requires a toolbox of techniques. This can include both allopathic (Western) approaches, as well as alternative treatments. One of these is massage. In my new slideshow for HealthCentral, I took a look at how massage can help RA: “Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic illness that affects many parts…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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
Chronic Pain Patients and the War on Opioids
People with chronic pain who depend on opioids for quality of life are extremely worried about the lack of nuance in the solutions to the OP or crisis. This week on HealthCentral, there are two articles from me on this issue. First, I talked to the chronic pain community about their concerns and experiences related…
What It’s like Being Institutionalized As a Child Away from Your Parents
When I was 11 years old, I was sent to a rehab hospital on the coast, far away from home. At the time, there were no treatments for juvenile arthritis. Instead, they treated you with physiotherapy, aqua therapy, and occupational therapy. This was the only option in Denmark at the time. My parents had no…
Hästens: The Best Sleep I’ve Ever Had
I have a new bed. I have never slept this well and it has reduced my chronic pain levels significantly. It is a blue checked Hästens bed. Earlier this year, I wrote about my quest for a new bed. To recap: every bed I found was too high, too hot, too smelly, or contained latex…
With and Without: Comparing Rheumatoid Arthritis and Fibromyalgia Pain
Updated June 16, 2021 Explaining the difference between rheumatoid arthritis (RA) pain and fibromyalgia pain isn’t easy. Articulating what pain feels like is extremely difficult to begin with, adding an attempt to differentiate different kinds of pain is even more of a challenge. I have both RA and Fibro, the latter adding on to the…
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