πͺI create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
π©Ί When the appointment leaves you feeling worse
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Hey Reader, I want to talk about something that comes up in this community more than almost anything else β and still somehow doesn't get named clearly enough. Medical gaslighting. It's what happens when a provider closes the door on investigation before it should be closed β attributing your symptoms to stress, citing your age or body size as the explanation, or treating a partial finding as the whole answer. And if you've experienced it, you probably already know the particular kind of exhaustion it leaves behind. This month's first post goes into what medical gaslighting actually looks like in a chronic illness context β the subtle versions, not just the obvious ones β and why it happens so often with conditions that are invisible, fluctuating, or underresearched. It also talks about what it does over time, because the way it trains you to doubt yourself is its own injury. It's a hard topic, but I think it's one that needs more direct language than it usually gets. Read: When You Have to Fight to Be Believed: Medical Gaslighting and Chronic Illnessβ |
April Smith | The Thriving Spoonie
πͺI create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
Hey Reader, There's a particular kind of frustration that comes with feeling like you're trying to manage your illness well and still somehow falling short. Like you're doing everything you can think of, and it's still not working the way you hoped. This week's post is about the patterns that tend to make chronic illness management harder in pretty consistent ways. Not because anyone is doing something wrong, but because some of these habits emerge almost naturally from living with a chronic...
Hi Reader, Have you ever had a day where nothing was technically wrong, but something felt off anyway? Not a symptom exactly. More like a shift. A heaviness you couldn't place, or a flatness that didn't quite make sense. For a long time, I explained those moments away. I'm probably just tired. I'm probably overthinking it. And by the time I was sure something was actually happening, I was already in it. That's what this week's post is about β the early signals your body sends before things...
Hi Reader, Summer has a particular way of making everything more visible. The gap between your energy and everyone else's. The trip you over-planned and under-recovered from. The neighbor who wants to talk about their hike while you're calculating whether you have enough in the tank to make lunch. I wrote about this one because it keeps coming up β in my own life, in conversations with readers, in the quiet after a gathering where I left before I wanted to and spent the next day paying for it...