It has only taken me ten years since my first article to return to this topic! I always intended to do so, but life got in the way. In that first article, I largely addressed medication issues. Now we’re going to talk about being your own patient advocate. What is a patient advocate? It’s an individual […]
I’m a Mémé!
My grandbaby has arrived! So we’re short on sleep, but long on love and joy! Moving up here, the new baby and associated sleep loss, change in general — they all lead to increased pain. I don’t take any narcotic pain medications anymore because the opiates just didn’t provide enough relief to be worth the hassle of […]
Being an Active Part of Your Own Health Care Team, Part I
People who have chronic or complex health issues need to take an active role in their own health care. That doesn’t come naturally to everyone, and in fact, it runs counter to the traditional way of interacting with “Doctor God” that I, for one, learned from my own parents. In this series, we’ll talk about […]
Fight Brain Fog!
Or, at the very least, give yourself more resources to fight it! Cognitive abilities are like muscles, in that they have to be developed and exercised regularly, even stretched to keep them flexible. We can’t necessarily avoid the cognitive deficits that come with some of our illnesses, or as a side effect of our medications. What […]
Canaries Are Us
Have you ever heard of how miners used to use canaries to test the air in mines? The birds would get ill, or even die, from bad air much more quickly than humans would realize that the air was bad, allowing the humans to get out of the mine. Those of us who have serious cases […]
Getting Better
I’ve been very busy over the last six months and had some major changes in my life that have been very stressful. As I’ve said elsewhere, my main strategy in dealing with fibromyalgia has been to reduce stress in my life as much as possible. Unfortunately, the main source of stress in my life over […]
Hope for Pain Relief
I’ve known of mindfulness practices for several years, and read Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn several years ago. It is one of the books I’ve recommended on this blog in the past. I have only recently, though, truly committed myself to […]
Long Time, No Posts
I’ve been gone so long that I doubt anyone reads this anymore. If the feed is still in anyone’s readers, they’ll just be stunned to see something come through! I am still out here. I have notes all over the places where I’ve started writing posts and then…something happens. I get tired or distracted or […]
Long Term Opiate Use Safe; One Woman’s Experience With Savella
There are two great articles from Karen Lee Richards in HealthCentral’s Chronic Pain Connection newsletter today. The first, Long-Term Opioid Therapy — What Are the Effects?, brings us the results of Dr. Forest Tennant’s ground-breaking study. He evaluated 24 chronic pain patients from 30 to 79 years old who had been using opioids for 10 […]
Do you have chronic myofascial pain (trigger points)?
Trigger points (TrPs) confuse many people. People who suffer from Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS) have tender points that are used for diagnosis, not trigger points. TrPs can lead to Chronic Myofascial Pain (CMP). Trying to explain both of them is really beyond me, but Devin Starlanyl does a great job of making all of it clear. […]