Lame-ish Awesome Year

I look back on this past year and think LAME! I spent a lot of time in pain, in bed, and at my doctors' offices. I spent this last year in medical debt. I feel like it's constantly two steps forward and then one step back. It's been frustrating to come to terms with the fact that my illness will always be around.

But I also look back and am grateful for this year. Before my chronic pain started, I lived a crazy, busy, active, A.D.H.D life. Now that I've been forced to sit still for awhile, I'm amazed at what I've learned. It has been miraculous how I've been blessed to find treatments that help, and even though I'll still endure some level pain for most of my life, I have found ways to make it more tolerable and manageable. Yeah! I found out who my real friends are. I grew closer to the people serving and lifting me. I learned insane amounts of lessons about myself, life, and people. I learned to really listen to my body, I learned how to confront my fears, and I learned we are surrounded by miracles. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Thank you again for all your nice comments, prayers, thoughts, and phone calls.

And on a less serious note, watch this really funny clip. Laughter is good for pain :)

Do you have irritability, headaches, joint pain or depression?

If this article interests you, just click on the link.

"Are You Walking Around With Celiac Disease and Don't Even Know It?"

via Carbwire by jimmy on 12/15/08

Alice Bast founded The National Foundation for Celiac Awareness in 2003 Have you or someone you know been to see doctor after doctor about joint pain, headaches, chronic pain, infertility, tingling in your body, depression, irritability, and other such issues only to be told they can’t find anything wrong with you? Frustration can set in [...]

Know your heart

Here is a beautiful story and prayer from Dr. Remen. Hopefully it can lift our spirits!

Recently during a physicians' seminar on listening, we all took out our stethoscopes and spent several minutes listening to our own hearts. We are all middle-aged people and for the first little while everyone anxiously diagnosed themselves, fearful of hearing a split S1... or a third heart sound. But as time went on, we moved past all that and heard something steadfast in the midst of our lives that had been there always, even before we were fully human. Our lives and all other lives depended on it. It was a profound and ineffable encounter with the mysterious. Most of us were deeply moved. We had auscultated and diagnosed hearts for years, but none of us had ever experienced this before. In that moment we had glimpsed something beyond our habitual way of seeing and hearing and knew that what we work with every day is life itself...Afterward there was a silence. Then one of the cardiologists present began to speak about his work and to wonder aloud how one could be so close to something holy and not know it. It reminded him, he said, of a prayer that he had heard some time back. Somewhat embarrassed, he began to recite it aloud:


Days pass and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles. Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing. Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightening, illuminates the darkness in which we walk. Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed. And we, clay touched by God will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder, "How filled with awe in this place and we did not know it."
Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather's blessings, p.70