June 2012
2 posts
2 tags
10 Things Lupus Will Never Take from Me: Part I
Regardless of the type of diagnosis, your world is forever changed. It’s a massive learning curve, figuring out how to manage your chronic illness and cope with your new normal. For me, as the newness of it all subsided, I was able to refocus on areas that drove my previous life – family, friends, exercise, and work. However, I couldn’t seem to keep lupus from creeping up on my everyday...
3 tags
Reshaping Your Dreams
As kids we dream of being astronauts, professional athletes, actors and race car drivers. I dreamed of playing hockey for the U.S.A. Olympic team. Growing up in Minnesota, my siblings and I were always ice skating on the pond in the backyard. The four of us had the perfect setup. My oldest brother was on a team with my younger sister who preferred cartwheels to skating, and my older sister and I...
April 2012
2 posts
“Some people dream of success while others wake up and work hard at it.”
A Tool to Help Manage Your Health Information
The effects of chronic illnesses vary greatly from person to person. For lupus, symptoms can be as minimal as a small rash or as serious as permanent organ damage. If you’re like me and many other chronic illness patients, the symptoms can affect any number of body parts. The different forms the diseases take can make them difficult to diagnose.
During the first several months, I went through...
March 2012
2 posts
1 tag
How to find smiles
I’ve gone from having a fully functioning, half-marathon running body to wondering what else is left to go wrong. When I first was diagnosed with Systemic lupus erythematosus, the disease and its inhibitors consumed my every thought. I figured I’d become more positive over time, but instead, I found myself growing more depressed as my symptoms persisted. Looking for anything to turn my gloomy...
When I'm Done
I was reading through a friend’s CaringBridge site who was fighting kidney cancer. After a few years of countless treatments and doctor appointments, he was done. He had beaten cancer. His years of hardship were summed up in a few simple, but powerful sentences. He was walking away from cancer…for good.
While I in no way shape or form was comparing my condition to what he went through, I couldn’t...
