The Seated View

I'm honoured that members of the community nominated me in the 5th Annual WEGOHealth Health Activist Awards . Being nominated for any award is always special, but when it's your peeps who do so, it means that much more. I'm nominated in two categories: Health Activist Hero and, believe it or not, Lifetime Achievement. That last one tickles me to no end. Thanks so much to Annette for the nomination, in which she said: " Lene has written a book called Your Life With RA and is almost done her 2nd book. She is active on Twitter, Facebook and her blog, and is also lead writer at HealthCentral. Not bad for a woman in a wheelchair since her teens."   I'd love if you'd endorse me .

I’m incredibly honoured to have been nominated in the Patient Advocate category of the Health Influencer Awards. I would greatly appreciate your vote if you like my work as an advocate and writer. The Patient Advocate category is for “Patients who have gone above and beyond to share their personal story, network and speak out to support other patients to influence better health outcomes.” The Health Influencer Awards recognizes “the Best of the Best in the digital health field,” and is given out by Remedy Health Media (the parent company of HealthCentral) together with New York City Health Business Leaders. Voting is open until September 2 . And please consider sharing this with others.

Being recognized is always nice. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t get an extra spring in their step when they’re told they’re doing good stuff. It certainly makes me happy every time I get a comment on email from someone saying they appreciate my writing and my advocacy. I keep every single one of them. There, I said it. It might make me hopelessly dorky, but if someone bothers to tell me something nice, I treasure it. Sometimes, the appreciation gets a little more official. I’ve been selected as the recipient of the PM360 2015 ELITE Award in the Patient Advocate category ! The PM360 ELITE is in its first year and “recognizes the most influential people in the healthcare industry—true catalysts who are creating extraordinary results. They are the industry’s most powerful minds and are the ones responsible for designing the future of healthcare.” Wow. I’m blown away and completely thrilled. Thank you to PM360 for this honour. The last 12 months have ...

There are some truly astonishing people out there. Some of these astonishing people have nominated me not for one, but three categories in the WEGO Health Activist Awards :  I am completely overwhelmed and massively grateful. You can see all the nominees on the WEGO Pinterest page - I'm not listed yet, but they're working on catching up.  Thank you so much to the people who nominated me. This means a lot.      

The nominees in the User's Choice Awards have been chosen and voting is open until November 18, 2012.  Help the Arthritis Foundation to develop a list of arthritis-friendly products and services - vote now !

    I'm a lucky woman. Thanks to you, my post Sensitive to the D-Word won second place in the Best Blog Post category of the 2011 Canadian Blog Awards. Because of you, more people now know about disability discrimination. Thank you. And why the whispering? This is how determined your body can be to make you sit still: Woke up Monday with a screaming back that didn't want me to move. Despite claiming I'd listen, I didn't – big surprise - and worked anyway. By Wednesday, my body was so disgusted with me that it upped the ante and gave me laryngitis. Since I can't write much without using Dragon Naturally Speaking to write, this meant working wasn't possible. I sort of did anyway (tip: don't type if you normally have to use Dragon. Or so my shoulders told me yesterday). Saw my doctor for my Humira shot and discussed the voice thing. She told me to stop talking until it no longer hurts to do so. Exactly how I'm supposed to know that it no lo...

Chuffed. Tickled pink. Over the moon. Validated. I feel like Sally Field. I won Best Chronic Illness Blog in the Canadian Blog Awards thanks to you and I want to let you know that it matters, just as it did two years ago . It matters that the CBA had a category for Chronic Illness, it matters that people cared enough to vote for the nominees in the category and on a personal note, it matters to me that I was nominated. I want to thank The Boy for nominating me, the other nominees in the category Graceful Agony and Chronic Connection for being such fantastic bloggers, the Canadian Blog Awards for doing this every year and for making me aware of so many great blogs, Dave Hingsburger who asked his readers to vote for me, too (Dave won two categories.). And you, the readers who voted for me. This means a lot. And I'm looking forward to figuring out how to put the button on my sidebar. But here's the thing... Much as I'm really jazzed about this - look at me go, I found ...

I've been known to say that being Danish-Canadian gives me a double whammy of reticence and self effacement, so imagine I'm twisting myself into a pretzel as I'm writing thisl. However! I am apparently not self-effacing enough. I'm nominated for the 2010 Canadian Blog Awards in the Best Chronic Illness Blog category. Should you feel that I deserve your endorsement, please consider casting your vote. You can access the categories here and supposedly, I should be able to embed the category here so you can vote without having to click around.  You can vote once every 24 hours until October 26. It worked!  As they used to say in the Bartles and Jaymes commercials , thank you for your support.

Yesterday, I found out that I had won Best Disability Blog in the Canadian Blog Awards and I am dorky and uncool enough to admit that I am ridiculously excited. Being nominated was a thrill and winning is an even bigger thrill. A couple of weeks ago, I watched Barbara Walters "10 most fascinating people of 2008" and one of the people she interviewed was Frank Langella (who I've liked for many years). Langella is particularly “fascinating” this year due to his role as Nixon in the stage play and now in the movie Frost/Nixon , which is apparently getting quite the Oscar buzz. Ms. Wawa asked if receiving an Oscar would mean a great deal to him and when he said a very firm 'yes', she faked surprise and asked why. To which he responded "it would be disingenuous and absurd to say 'oh, it doesn't matter.' Of course it matters" and based on his vocabulary and honesty, I instantly developed quite the crush on the man. N ow, I’m...

I used to be a bit of a culture vulture - went to concerts, museums and galleries, the opera and dance (modern, traditional ballet sort of bores me) – and most of the time, I went either with my mother or Ken . It was our "thing" and I have a lot of good memories connected to those outings. Like the time when mor - if you're new around here, that's the Danish for mom - and I were almost thrown out of the opera because we couldn't stop giggling at a particularly ridiculous performance. The time Ken and I went to see an exhibit by Anish Kapoor (astonishingly beautiful art and last year, Ken made me a purple hat inspired by this , which is breathtaking in person) and on the guided tour when the woman working in a gallery spoke of how she felt she could whisper all her secrets to one particular sculpture, we had to stop looking at each other in an attempt to control another helpless fit of the giggles. Ken and I, awed, seeing Cirque du Soleil for the first ti...