Download or read book Surviving and Thriving with an Invisible Chronic Illness written by Ilana Jacqueline and published by New Harbinger Publications. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An important antidote to the dogmatic ‘kale and vitamins’ tone of most ‘self-help’ literature.” —Alexa Tsoulis-Reay, senior writer, New York magazine Popular blogger Ilana Jacqueline offers smart and savvy advice, humor, and practical tips for living with an invisible chronic illness. Do you live with a chronic, debilitating, yet invisible condition? You may feel isolated, out of step, judged, lonely, or misunderstood—and that’s on top of dealing with the symptoms of your actual illness. Take heart. You are not alone, although sometimes it can feel that way. Written by a blogger who suffers from an invisible chronic illness, Surviving and Thriving with an Invisible Chronic Illness offers peer-to-peer support to help you stay sane, be your own advocate, and get back to living your life. This compelling guide is written for anyone suffering with an illness no one can see—such as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), Lyme disease, lupus, dysautonomia, or even multiple sclerosis (MP). This book will tell you everything you need to know about living with a complicated, invisible condition—from how to balance sex, dating, and relationships to handling work and school with unavoidable absences. You’ll also learn to navigate judg-y or skeptical relatives and strangers and—most importantly—manage your medical care. Suffering from a chronic illness doesn’t mean you can’t live an active, engaged life. This book will show you how.
Download or read book The Invisible Kingdom written by Meghan O'Rourke and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION Named one of the BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by NPR, The New Yorker, Time, and Vogue “Remarkable.” –Andrew Solomon, The New York Times Book Review "At once a rigorous work of scholarship and a radical act of empathy.”—Esquire "A ray of light into those isolated cocoons of darkness that, at one time or another, may afflict us all.” —The Wall Street Journal "Essential."—The Boston Globe A landmark exploration of one of the most consequential and mysterious issues of our time: the rise of chronic illness and autoimmune diseases A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans: these are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Renowned writer Meghan O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier. Drawing on her own medical experiences as well as a decade of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts, O’Rourke traces the history of Western definitions of illness, and reveals how inherited ideas of cause, diagnosis, and treatment have led us to ignore a host of hard-to-understand medical conditions, ones that resist easy description or simple cures. And as America faces this health crisis of extraordinary proportions, the populations most likely to be neglected by our institutions include women, the working class, and people of color. Blending lyricism and erudition, candor and empathy, O’Rourke brings together her deep and disparate talents and roles as critic, journalist, poet, teacher, and patient, synthesizing the personal and universal into one monumental project arguing for a seismic shift in our approach to disease. The Invisible Kingdom offers hope for the sick, solace and insight for their loved ones, and a radical new understanding of our bodies and our health.
Download or read book Living with a Silent Illness written by Serenity Tipton and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2017-06-14 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are hundreds of thousands of individuals living with Non-Epileptic Seizures (NES) and Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Events (PNEE) all around the world. This powerful, packed book explains in detail what all of the medical terms are, along with important information for individuals living with NES PNEE. The information in this book is for both the individual living with this illness as well, as their caregivers. This book does not contain chapters, but sections, such as Seizures Disorder, Mental Distress, Abuse, Personal Stories, along with Testimonials of other individuals I had talked to. This is not a one size fits all type of book. There are so many different names and diagnosis for these issues, which many doctors, neurologist, and psychiatrists find it hard to describe what exactly the diagnosis should be. With anticipation by reading this book, it will help individuals and their families to better understand what Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures, and Non-Epileptic Events.
Download or read book Ask Me About My Uterus written by Abby Norman and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For any woman who has experienced illness, chronic pain, or endometriosis comes an inspiring memoir advocating for recognition of women's health issues In the fall of 2010, Abby Norman's strong dancer's body dropped forty pounds and gray hairs began to sprout from her temples. She was repeatedly hospitalized in excruciating pain, but the doctors insisted it was a urinary tract infection and sent her home with antibiotics. Unable to get out of bed, much less attend class, Norman dropped out of college and embarked on what would become a years-long journey to discover what was wrong with her. It wasn't until she took matters into her own hands -- securing a job in a hospital and educating herself over lunchtime reading in the medical library -- that she found an accurate diagnosis of endometriosis. In Ask Me About My Uterus, Norman describes what it was like to have her pain dismissed, to be told it was all in her head, only to be taken seriously when she was accompanied by a boyfriend who confirmed that her sexual performance was, indeed, compromised. Putting her own trials into a broader historical, sociocultural, and political context, Norman shows that women's bodies have long been the battleground of a never-ending war for power, control, medical knowledge, and truth. It's time to refute the belief that being a woman is a preexisting condition.
Download or read book Silent Winter written by Joanna Moore and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-01 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silent Winter is about the silent spread of toxic chemicals in our daily lives and their role in the growing prevalence of illnesses such as cancer, chronic fatigue, diabetes, asthma digestive issues, depression, dementia, and others. The scientific evidence about chronic illness and toxic chemicals is withheld from us through stunningly elaborate efforts so that business can continue as usual. Approximately 45% of the adult US population now has at least one chronic illness, and chronic illness is commonly caused by chronic exposure to toxic chemicals. We are often told that these diseases are a result of our lifestyle or our genes. We rarely hear that chronic illness is on the rise as a result of toxic chemicals in consumer products and throughout our environment. Industry does not want to change, so it is forcing us to change on an evolutionary level to deal with the onslaught of chemicals in our daily lives. When we cannot keep up and get ill, we are sold chemical solutions to make us feel better. But individuals and families dealing with chronic illness often know or suspect that toxic chemicals have played a role in the demise of their health. The author also shows how the problem is covered up at a societal level by obscuring what we know, and how discussion of possible solutions is silenced by manipulating the marketplace. Millions of human lives are being muted as a result of chronic illness. Finally, the author discusses our way out of this mess. In the 1962 book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson dedicated one short chapter to the anticipated human health impacts from toxic chemicals. That chapter seeded the present work, Silent Winter, which was written after sixty additional years of scientific research and widespread human exposure to a variety of toxic chemicals. In Our Stolen Future, 1996, Theo Colborn et al. warned of the potential dangers of hormone disrupting chemicals on human health. Nearly another 25 years have passed since that writing. Silent Winter reveals the observed impacts of these hormone disrupting chemicals on human health.
Download or read book Brain on Fire written by Susannah Cahalan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING CHLOË GRACE MORETZ A “captivating” (The New York Times Book Review), award-winning memoir and instant New York Times bestseller that goes far beyond its riveting medical mystery, Brain on Fire is a powerful account of one woman’s struggle to recapture her identity. When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled as violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened? In an “unforgettable” (Elle), “stunningly brave” (NPR), and breathtaking narrative, Susannah tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that almost didn’t happen. “A fascinating look at the disease that…could have cost this vibrant, vital young woman her life” (People), Brain on Fire is an unforgettable exploration of memory and identity, faith and love, and a profoundly compelling tale of survival and perseverance.
Download or read book The Price of Silence written by Liza Long and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liza Long, the author of “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother"—as seen in the documentaries American Tragedy and HBO®'s A Dangerous Son—speaks out about mental illness. Like most of the nation, Liza Long spent December 14, 2012, mourning the victims of the Newtown shooting. As the mother of a child with a mental illness, however, she also wondered: “What if my son does that someday?” The emotional response she posted on her blog went viral, putting Long at the center of a passionate controversy. Now, she takes the next step. Powerful and shocking, The Price of Silence looks at how society stigmatizes mental illness—including in children—and the devastating societal cost. In the wake of repeated acts of mass violence, Long points the way forward.
Download or read book The Long Goodbye written by Meghan O'Rourke and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-04-14 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Anguished, beautifully written... The Long Goodbye is an elegiac depiction of drama as old as life." -- The New York Times Book Review From one of America's foremost young literary voices, a transcendent portrait of the unbearable anguish of grief and the enduring power of familial love. What does it mean to mourn today, in a culture that has largely set aside rituals that acknowledge grief? After her mother died of cancer at the age of fifty-five, Meghan O'Rourke found that nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her sorrow. In the first anguished days, she began to create a record of her interior life as a mourner, trying to capture the paradox of grief-its monumental agony and microscopic intimacies-an endeavor that ultimately bloomed into a profound look at how caring for her mother during her illness changed and strengthened their bond. O'Rourke's story is one of a life gone off the rails, of how watching her mother's illness-and separating from her husband-left her fundamentally altered. But it is also one of resilience, as she observes her family persevere even in the face of immeasurable loss. With lyricism and unswerving candor, The Long Goodbye conveys the fleeting moments of joy that make up a life, and the way memory can lead us out of the jagged darkness of loss. Effortlessly blending research and reflection, the personal and the universal, it is not only an exceptional memoir, but a necessary one.
Download or read book The Chronic Illness Workbook written by Patricia Fennell and published by Albany Health Management Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE CHRONIC ILLNESS WORKBOOK brings clarity and order to what feels like an unmanageable and isolating experience. It shows both those who are ill and those who care for them how to live a full and meaningful life despite undeniable difficulties. Using her extensive experience with chronic illness patients, Patricia Fennell has created an original, comprehensive, research-validated approach that considers not only the physical aspects of chronic illness, but the psychological, social, and economic apsects as well.
Download or read book Speaking of Sadness written by David Allen Karp and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Speaking of Sadness, based on fifty in-depth interviews, provides first-hand accounts of the depression experience while discovering clear regularities in the ways that personal identities are shaped over the course of an "illness career." The new edition of the book is highlighted by a thoroughly new and extensive introduction"--
Download or read book Nobody s Normal How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness written by Roy Richard Grinker and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compassionate and captivating examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody’s Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma—from the eighteenth century, through America’s major wars, and into today’s high-tech economy. Nobody’s Normal argues that stigma is a social process that can be explained through cultural history, a process that began the moment we defined mental illness, that we learn from within our communities, and that we ultimately have the power to change. Though the legacies of shame and secrecy are still with us today, Grinker writes that we are at the cusp of ending the marginalization of the mentally ill. In the twenty-first century, mental illnesses are fast becoming a more accepted and visible part of human diversity. Grinker infuses the book with the personal history of his family’s four generations of involvement in psychiatry, including his grandfather’s analysis with Sigmund Freud, his own daughter’s experience with autism, and culminating in his research on neurodiversity. Drawing on cutting-edge science, historical archives, and cross-cultural research in Africa and Asia, Grinker takes readers on an international journey to discover the origins of, and variances in, our cultural response to neurodiversity. Urgent, eye-opening, and ultimately hopeful, Nobody’s Normal explains how we are transforming mental illness and offers a path to end the shadow of stigma.
Download or read book Sun in Days Poems written by Meghan O'Rourke and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Poetry Book of 2017 by the New York Times Book Review, Sun in Days is “O’Rourke’s most ravishing and brilliant collection yet” (Cathy Park Hong). From acclaimed poet and critic Meghan O’Rourke comes a powerful collection about the frailty of the body, the longing for a child, and the philosophical questions raised when the body goes dramatically awry. These formally ambitious poems and lyric essays give voice to the experience of illness, the permanence of loss, and invigorating moments of grace. A Paterson Poetry Prize finalist, Sun in Days is unsentimental yet deeply felt, characterized by O’Rourke’s signature lyric precision and force of observation.
Download or read book Chronic written by Steven Phillips and published by Houghton Mifflin. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autoimmune and chronic illness are a global crisis, with an estimated 50 million sufferers in the US alone. While modern medicine has drastically reduced overall mortality rates--from heart disease, stroke, HIV, and even cancer--what is fueling this twenty-first century pandemic? In this eye-opening, provocative book, Steven Phillips, MD, and his former patient, singer/songwriter Dana Parish, take on the medical establishment. Backed by a trove of published data, Chronic reveals striking evidence that a broad range of microbes, including the Lyme bacteria, cause a variety of recurrent conditions and autoimmune diseases. Chronic delves into the history and science behind common infections that are difficult to diagnose and treat, debunks widely held beliefs by doctors and patients alike, reveals how medicine got the facts patently wrong, and provides solutions that empower readers to get their lives back. Dr. Phillips was already an internationally renowned physician specializing in complex, chronic diseases when he became a patient himself. After nearly dying from his own mystery illness, he experienced firsthand the medical community's ignorance about the pathogens that underlie a range of chronic conditions--from fibromyalgia, lupus, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, and rheumatoid arthritis to depression, anxiety, and neurodegenerative disorders. Parish, too, watched her health spiral after twelve top doctors missed an underlying infection that caused heart failure and other sudden, debilitating physical and psychiatric symptoms. Now, they've come together with a mission: to change the current model of simply treating symptoms, often with dangerous, lifelong drugs, and shift the focus to finding and curing root causes of chronic diseases that affect millions around the world.
Download or read book Miss Diagnosis written by Molly Murray and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-18 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Molly Murray portrays her personal evolution from raw despair to the triumph of self-love in this intimate, often painful, and sometimes humorous collection of poetry about life as a spoonie. She describes in exquisite detail her experience of chronic illness, weaving wry commentary of the medical patriarchy with an exquisite sense of self in a folkloric tapestry of themes that are often bypassed by able-ist mainstream culture. This is a book that will make you feel "seen."
Download or read book Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2016-09-03 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.
Download or read book Silent Suffering written by Lauren Murphree and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-24 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronic illness is a lonely and cruel journey. Lauren knows this firsthand in her own battle with lyme disease, which she was diagnosed with when she was nine years old. Join Lauren on a journey of healing and wholeness as she gets back to the basics of life, reflects on the lessons that have been learned, and rediscovers the heart of God amid suffering. Silent Suffering was written to help others heal. Lauren shares the different treatments she has done around the world, what has and hasn't worked for her, and how she has been healing from trauma. Lauren also shares how neuroplasticity has not only been healing her brain but also her body. There's a common theme weaved throughout the book that God has always been doing a deeper work than physical healing. It's a reminder that there is a God who's good beyond our belief, and that a life anchored in His love can still be lived amidst unfathomable suffering.
Download or read book Close to the Bone written by Jean Shinoda Bolen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1998-04-03 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Communication with those we love and with ourselves.
