All tagged Health

finding gratitude in family and friends journey to understand my disease.

finding gratitude in family and friends journey to understand my disease.

Staci Stringer
Health

Living with a chronic disease, it can be hard some days to find something to be Thankful for. Some days it feels like friends are slowly drifting away as I stayed curled up in my bed. The hardest part about living with a chronic disease is not the pain, you learn to live with the pain. It's explaining what you're going through to people who don't understand. It's taken friends and family seeing me at my worst to truly understand what is happening to me. They may not understand it, and their reactions may not be what those of us with a chronic illness expect, but we have to remember they are trying their hardest to understand that they’ve never experienced.

dealing with difficult doctors.

dealing with difficult doctors.

Staci Stringer
Health

Pain comes in all forms. The small twinge, a bit of soreness, the random pain that we live with everyday. Then there is the kind of pain you just can't ignore, a level of pain so great that it blocks out everything else, makes the rest of your world fade away until all we can think about is how much we hurt, how we manage our pain is up to us. We anesthetize, ride it out, embrace it, ignore it, and for some of us the best way to manage pain is to just push through it. That's what most of us are doing, pushing through it. But let's advocate for ourselves and find someone to help us through it so we're not alone in this.

11 confessions of someone living with a chronic illness.

11 confessions of someone living with a chronic illness.

Staci Stringer
Health

I feel like I've lost myself along the way of this 13 year journey with Arthritis. My diagnosis has changed, my pain has changed and so has my support system. I'm definitely not the person I was when I was diagnosed. What I have learned though in these past 13 years, is what not to say to me. Even if you have the exact same condition I have, it doesn't mean that what works for you will work for me. There is no cure, that's why it's called chronic. It never fully goes away. I've compiled a list of thing you should know about someone with a chronic illness. This list is pretty specific to me, but I'm sure a lot of it applies to others.