Even as my world shrank over the years, it was enriched in many ways through the social networks I developed online. The impact of those social networks on my quality of life cannot be understated. Indeed, it was in one of my first online groups in 1997 that I met
I didn’t want to be here right now. After a year and a half of hell of dealing with a mental illness that wasn’t my own and dealing with the aftermath of that; of trying to get my abdominal pain resolved once and for all and getting partial resolution (which
I have mentally begun this post for weeks, but a chronically ill life has a way of shaking loose any idea of control over one’s destiny. Anyone who has been ill for a while will understand what I mean when I say I’m suffering a bad case of doctor fatigue.
A watermark is an outline of the tide’s advance and retreat. In some ways I feel like I am part of that outline, lying at low ebb, among the beautiful broken detritus of the sea. These last weeks I have been merely functioning: meeting the very real needs of the
I’m taking part in WEGO Health’s Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge Day 6 #HAWMC – Write a letter to an older you (tell us what age you’re writing to!). What do you want to ask yourself? What lesson do you want to make sure you remember? I’m writing to my
I’m taking part in WEGO Health’s Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge Day 1 #HAWMC – Why you write – tell us a little bit about why you write about your health online and what got you started. Why do I write? My thoughts about my reasons for writing changed several
As strange as it may sound, approaching my 23rd anniversary of being a sick person (I remember it well – the food poisoning, giardia or whatever it was that triggered the whole thing and led to me spending most of my 24th birthday puking), I think one of my best
There are many types of fatigue, some of which are unknown to those who have never experienced a chronic invisible illness. The first kind is the result of physical exertion, which generally leads to an almost pleasant tiredness, as it is often accompanied by the knowledge of a job well
As a long-time sufferer with depression, I can unreservedly say that helping care for a loved one in acute depression challenges everything you know and have come to understand and believe about the illness. Above all, I find my thoughts coming back to the same things. Depression is not a boogeyman.
A quandry for any writer, not just a blogger, arises at those times when to tell your story means to risk betraying a confidence, either that of a loved one or a villain. The former, you wish to protect with all your heart; the latter, to avoid, if only to