chronic illness

Chronic Illness Resources

chronic illness resources

The prompt for today’s post for Day 4 of WeGo Health’s Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge is to create a “care page” that contains recommended resources for those who are newly diagnosed or are starting their journey to advocate for themselves or a loved one!

I have kept a Chronic Illness Resources page live on this blog for awhile that contains websites, books, and blogs that may be helpful for those living with chronic illness but I know I need to do a better job of keeping it fresh and updated so this has definitely been a good push to making keeping that page updated a priority!

If you have any recommendations on websites, books, or other resources that you recommend adding to the list please let me know! You can also leave me a comment with your blog url if you would like to be added to the blog roll!

 

chronic illness

Chronic Illness Survival Kits

Spoonie-Survival-Kits

The prompt for Day 9 of National Health Blog Post Month included preparing care packages and I have written several posts creating different types of survival kits so I thought I would share them!

1- Bowel Prep Survival Kit – If you ever had to prepare for a colonoscopy, you may want to check out this post! Because of my celiac disease, I have to have yearly EGDs (which are a much easier prep!) but I still have to have routine colonoscopies and I have had to perform bowel preps for surgery so I have survived my share of preps.

2- Surgery Survival Kit – Six surgeries in eight years has turned me into quite an expert so I have gathered some of my favorite items that I recommend to include in creating a care kit if you have a friend or loved one preparing for surgery or is in the hospital!

3- Flare Survival Kit – I asked on Facebook what fellow spoonies included in their “flare survival kits” that made getting through a flare a little more tolerable and this is the list of responses! I definitely got some great ideas of things to keep on hand to allow myself to be a little more comfortable the next time a flare rolls around!

If you had to create a “chronic illness survival kit,” what would you include?

blogging

Disclosure: What Is Off-Limits

I’ve been blogging for over five years now and one of my goals with this blog has been to maintain a certain level of transparency about my life with chronic illness, infertility, and adoption – the good, the bad, and the ugly. I try to keep the atmosphere positive and encouraging but I also want to be real about tough topics as well.

However, there are some things that I am dedicated to being off-limits when it comes to blogging:

1- My Marriage. Obviously I am very open to discussing how chronic illness and infertility impact marriage and my husband has even guest posted and I think it is an extremely important topic to talk about as the impact of illness and infertility on marriage is huge and the divorce rate is high and we need to be aware of that. However, this will not be a place where I come to air my dirty laundry or bad-mouth my husband. The details of our marriage are private and out of respect for my husband I plan to keep it that way. For example, I will continue to write about how illness affects marriage and relationships, with the support of my husband, but I will not write about the specifics within our marriage (such as detailing our conflicts, etc). The same rule goes for other family relationships.

2- Abby’s BirthMom. I could talk to you about adoption all day long and the crazy, hard, beautiful journey that it is. I will gladly talk about the benefits about open adoption and what it means for us as we have an open adoption with Abby’s birthmom but I will not share details about her specifically, such as why she chose to place or her history, as it is not my story to share. There are certain details about the adoption that we have not even shared with our families as they are her story and a part of Abby’s story that we do not feel like we have the right to share.

These are the two big ones but I think there is always that search for balance when it  comes to blogging, especially when you focus on personal topics such as health and infertility, so I do believe you really need to be aware of boundaries and find what is comfortable for you and your family.

If you are a blogger, what do you consider off-limits?