ðŠI create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
ð§Đ When your body still doesn't make sense
|
Hi Reader, I've been thinking about the moment when the question changes. Not "why do I feel this way" â but "is this just how it is now." If you've been there, you know the difference. The first question assumes there's a findable answer. The second has stopped assuming that. This week's post lives in the space between those two questions. It's about why most symptom tracking attempts fall apart (and why that's not a consistency problem), what pattern recognition actually looks like when your body doesn't give you clean signals, and why paying attention over time â even imperfectly, even slowly â is worth doing. It's a slower read, but I think it'll feel familiar. Read: The Quiet Work of Learning Your Body's Patterns With Chronic Illnessâ Talk soon, |
April Smith | The Thriving Spoonie
ðŠI create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
Hi Reader, If you've ever walked out of an appointment more tired than when you walked in, even though "all you did" was talk for twenty minutes, this one's for you. Advocating for yourself in an appointment isn't one task. It's tracking your symptoms, reading the room, watching your tone, and deciding in real time what's worth pushing on, all while your body may already be running on empty. That's a lot of invisible work that never shows up as "work" from the outside, which is part of why...
Hey Reader, I want to talk about something that comes up in this community more than almost anything else â 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 â 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...
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...