💪I create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
🩺 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 — 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 — 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 — the subtle versions, not just the obvious ones — 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 Illness |
April Smith | The Thriving Spoonie
💪I create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
Hi Reader, I hope your August is treating you kindly, because mine has been a lot lately. Between my husband's work schedule shifting around him lately, our community volunteer commitments ramping up for fall, and my own Tuesday choir practice, dinner has become the one thing I genuinely don't have extra energy left for by the time evening rolls around. And that's before my GI issues decide to flare and toss the whole plan out anyway. So this month, I stopped trying to plan meals and started...
Hi Reader, I want to tell you about a morning recently that didn't go anything like it was supposed to. I'd had a flare bad enough that I ended up calling my husband home from work. Pain and nausea that just wouldn't let up, my body sweating and shivering through it while my nervous system tried to sort itself out. Not fun. And for a few days after, my normal morning routine, the one I actually rely on, meds before food, food before coffee, a slow unhurried shower, just didn't happen. At all....
Hi Reader, Every August the same advice shows up: get your mornings together, build a routine, start the day with momentum. It's aimed at a body that gets to choose what happens next, and that's just not how mornings work when you're managing chronic illness. This week's post is about what actually helps instead. Knowing your non-negotiables, the few things that truly have to happen. Sketching out a full-capacity and a low-capacity version of your morning before you need them. Checking in...