The Seated View

Do you talk about your pain or do you keep it to yourself? so many people who live with chronic pain due the latter. And it's not always a good idea. In my new post for Mango Health, I write about why talking about your pain can be good for you : "It’s not considered polite to talk about pain. With the possible exception of your doctor, no one is thrilled if you bring up the fact that you are hurting. Many people simply don’t know how to respond to the unique qualities of each painful sensation as you experience them.  So we who live with chronic pain or other less understood symptoms, like insomnia, often learn to silence ourselves. When around others, we don’t wince or massage our aching body parts. We do our best to camouflage with makeup or a smile any signs that we are not feeling well. Silencing our pain has consequences And it has ripple effects. If you feel you can’t talk about your symptoms to the people closest to you, you start not talking about yo...

  Emil deAndreis had just signed his first pro contract as a baseball player when rheumatoid arthritis  went nuts in his body. His new book is a memoir of his life with baseball (an excellent book, by the way).  I interviewed him for HealthCentral: ""Almost everything good that has happened to me has its roots in baseball.” In his memoir Hard to Grip: A Memoir of Youth, Baseball, and Chronic Illness , Emil DeAndreis tells the story of how he grew up with a passion for baseball and a dream to play pro ball. A dream that was snatched away by rheumatoid arthritis (RA). A lyrical, often funny, and very honest book, Hard to Grip is a compelling story of how a boy became a man while living and breathing baseball. I recently spoke to Emil about his book and his life. Baseball dreams “I’ve been in love with the game since before I could remember anything,” Emil said. Growing up in San Francisco in the late 1980s, he remembers going...

There are times when I dream of living in a cabin in the woods, far from away from civilization and the noise (and okay, people). Waking up to fresh air, birdsong, and the wind in the pines would be my idea of heaven. And then there’s reality. For the past week, I have been obsessively watching Life Below Zero , a documentary/reality show that follows several people who live in the Alaskan wilderness. Like waaaaay out in the wilderness. This series is as much about these people as it is about the absolutely stunning nature — you might say that Alaska itself is a character in the show. The first season takes place during the depth of the Alaskan winter and let me just see say this: we have no idea when we complain about cold. The people that you get to know are fascinating, sometimes unfathomable (living on the tundra – why??), often funny, and their lives are equally fascinating, sometimes heartbreaking, and at times really scary. (Have a bit of patien...

How’s that for a click-bait title? As I was having my breakfast this morning, I read an article in the Toronto Star called Moving from Religious Accommodation to Religious Acceptance . The topic itself is something that interests me, and I thought there might also be some good points that I could use for a post about moving from disability accommodation to acceptance. And then steam started coming out my ears. The article is about anti-Muslim paranoia and its prevalence in Canadian society. The writer makes the point that in order to move past the fear and negative stereotypes that exists in connection to Islam and Muslims, we must “rehabilitate people who probably do not have many personal relationships with Muslims” and engage in “ongoing dialogic work directly with racists, bigots and Islamophobes.” All right, so I’ll give them that. I don’t think the point is made very well that they are talking exclusively about people who have an irrational fear of Islam ...

Living with RA can be really hard and I'm not talking about the pain and fatigue. The reactions from people you meet and the lack of knowledge can create some truly unique situations. For my new HealthCentral slideshow, I asked the RA community what they most wanted others to know : "Living with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) can be extremely frustrating. You have to cope not only with the condition causing pain and fatigue, but also with a lack of understanding from other people. We asked the RA community what they most wanted others to know about the chronic illness." Help on over to HealthCentral to read the slideshow (and share with the world) .   

I'm so glad to be here. I wanted to write something for today. One year ago, on March 30, 2016, things went south after I was extubated , I flatlined, but through some highly skilled intervention, I survived. That is one hell of a miraculous gift. Although I am normally full of words about the experience, the aftermath,, and all the feels involved, I find myself  oddly speechless on this, my first Zombie Birthday. All I know is that I am so grateful. So instead of writing a whole lot of words basically e xpressing that I don't know what to say, I thought I'd instead share some photos from the past year. Life. Isn't it wonderful? And this... well. It's my Zombie Birthday, after all. I had to. Thanks, Alex.