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Living and Blogging with Chronic Illness — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)

I was surfing the BlogHer Health and Wellness Blogroll, looking for something to write about tonight, and I came across a new blog on living with autoimmune disease. As you might already know, I live with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and other chronic health problems…So, I decided to do tonight’s post, on living with chronic illness.

The new blog I discovered on the BlogHer Blogroll is – Life in the Autoimmune Lane

My name is Michelle and I decided to start a blog about my illness and my life. I became sick about 2 years ago and at that time I didn’t know what was happening to me. 2 doctors, 3 neurologists, and 1 rheumatologist later I now know that I have a couple of autoimmune diseases; still working on a definite diagnosis… So far I have Mixed Connective Tissue Disease, Dermatomyositis, and most recently what they think is the early stages of Rheumatoid Arthritis.

Another new blog to me – The ICI Experience

On The ICIE I blog about all kinds aspects of my experience of living with invisible, or concealed chronic illness (ICI or CCI). I’m finding blogging about it all to be very rewarding, very therapeutic, and I hope what I write about may help others in similar situations.

Dianna blogs about her journey of living with MS

I am a retired woman with oodles of interests. I have Multiple Sclerosis and work hard at learning, sharing and trying to stay empowered and empower others.

I’ve always loved the blog Fighting Fatigue, and it just happens there is a post on 104 Great Resources for CFS, Fibromyagia, & Interstitial Cystitis…

Check out these 104 great resources I pulled together that will help you with every aspect of CFS, Fibromyalgia and Interstitial Cystitis. Please leave me a comment and let me know if you found this useful! From articles, to quizzes, to videos, to support group listings, I’ve got these illnesses covered!

Here are the first 4 of 104…

1. Foods to Fight Fatigue. Exhaustion can be a constant problem for some people. Beat fatigue with five energy boosters and power up for a healthier you!

2. Massage Benefits & Massage Therapy. Massage is the systematic placing of the hands on a body and applying techniques to treat the body and the person to relieve ailments and stress.

3. Take A Break To Achieve Better Success At Work. Too much thought and too many hours invested in only one place lead to stress and fatigue.

4. Fatigue Fighting Tips. People who are fatigued feel chronically tired in both body and mind. Low energy levels can be caused by a number of factors working in combination, such as unhealthy lifestyle choices, workplace problems and stress.

Over at Keep Working Girlfriend, I found a great post by Sandy Lahmann, a women living, working, and writing about chronic illness and disabilities.

I am going to combine my ability to write with my knowledge of disabilities and create a business as a freelance writer specializing in disability topics and also offering myself as a disability consultant. With having a disability myself and having a college degree in special education, I believe I’m qualified. And I surely can write. And the money is in nonfiction. And all of this can be done at home on my computer and with my telephone.

Here’s how I’ve started. After having the umteenth million incident in which I’m out in my community and an able-bodied person does something that again shows that they just don’t get it, I called my friend, Anne, to complain. But then it dawned on me, we complain to each other, but who is educating the able-bodied? Then I realized, I could do that.

I had in mind a column. I started by submitting my first column as a letter-to-the-editor to my local newspaper, the Summit Daily. Right off, with the first one, they offered me the column. So I now have a column in my local paper called Disability 101.

Also at Keep Working Girlfriend…

Living with a chronic illness requires that you continually examine your priorities. Career or health? Hide and seek with children or health? Partying or health? Social life or health? Favorite foods or health? Movie or bed? Important business deadline or health?

In a new and revised edition of Think and Grow Rich, revised and updated for the 21st Century by Dr. Arthur R. Pell, there’s an entire chapter devoted to the 6 basic human fears. It looks like those of us living with a chronic illness get to tackle 3 of them head on: fear of illness, fear of criticism and fear of poverty. That’s 1/2 of the total sum of the basic fears for human beings! (The other 3 are fear of death, fear of old age and fear of loss of love of someone. Perhaps we really get to look at all 6.)

Truthfully, every human being faces each of these 6 fears at one time or another, so we’re not really special. However, when you live with a chronic illness, you certainly get a crash course dealing with the first three I named.

Also See:

Chronic Holiday

Blue Coffee Mug

The Body Chronic

Videos on CFS/Fibromyagia/Chronic Illness

The Oprah Show Controversy: Is your illness all your fault?