The ICI Experience:

I'm back from the second root canal in two weeks.  I'm still sleeping a lot and am grateful that I can take the time I need for recovery. About the song; it says a lot for me, anyway... (If this video is skipping on your computer, or you can't see it in the email of this post, here's the direct link to it:  The Gratitude Song .) From The Worldwide Gratitude Project , a wonderful project to help us express our gratitude. I'll admit that I have a hard time seeing the good things in my life right now. Any help I can get is much appreciated!  I hope you find something there to help you express your gratiude.

A prayer for Sunday's post seems appropriate. Although I'm getting this post out so late that subscribers might not get it until Monday. Speaking of Monday, I have to have a root canal tomorrow. I forgot about that when I decided to try NaBloPoMo again. I'm not going to try to post tomorrow, which takes me out of the NaBloPoMo competition. I'll have to see how the root canal goes before I decide how often I'm going to try to post for the rest of the month. This Prayer for Peace was written by Thomas Merton , read in Congress on April 18, 1962 and placed in the Congressional Record. It was at the request of Frank Kowalksi, Congressman from Connecticut.  In 1962 the Vietnam War was happening, but it seems to be totally applicable here and now.  It also seems to me that it's a prayer that might be accepted by most religions. What does this have to do with chronic illness, you might ask?  I'll tell you what I think about that at the end of this p

I usually don't like to use the term warrior, or any other word that makes me think of war or violence, to describe my relationship with chronic illness.  I just don't think it's a productive use of my energy to think of battling myself or anything else.  Then I watched the movie The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, which is based on a true story starring Nick Nolte, Scott Mechlowicz, and Amy Smart.  And I started to re-think the word warrior. From the book: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives by Dan Millman Warriors, warriors we call ourselves. We fight for splendid virtue, for high endeavor, for sublime wisdom, therefore we call ourselves warriors. ~Aunguttara Nikaya From the interview with Dan Millman, "Peaceful Warrior - From Book to Screen" page 209, at the end of the Peaceful Warrior book: Q: Why is the book called Peaceful Warrior? It's about a gymnast, not a soldier or martial artist. What does it mean to be a Peaceful War

The other day I wrote about FM being a whipping post for the media among others ( TV show Bones uses fibro as an excuse for murder ).  After writing that post I was inspired to listen to the song Whipping Post by the Allman Brothers Band ( take your choice of the 5 minute version or the 22 minute version) and to check out the lyrics (including a nine minute video of the band, before Duane Allman died). Ah, the music of my youth.  But back to the here and now.  I was then inspired to rewrite these classic Southern Rock lyrics.  Here's the result. I been run down, I been lied to, I don't know why I let that mean doctor make me a fool. He took all my money, and my new car. Now they’re usin’ all kinds of media They’re makin’ fools of us ever’whar. Sometimes I feel, sometimes I feel, Like I been tied to the whipping post, Tied to the whipping post, Tied to the whipping post, Good lord, I feel like I'm dyin'. Some friends tell me, that I’m such a fool, A

4/2/2016 Update:  The ALJ Disposition Data Spreadsheet has gone the way of lots of software that was state of the art; it doesn't work anymore.  You can see the statistics and comparisons on the post dated 2/26/2011 and titled The Social Security Administration does not like negative publicity . 12/17/13:  Updated all links.  Dot & her Fibro Mom's blog has been gone for years now.  They have a Facebook page but nothing has been posted there since 2011.  I hope they are doing so much better that they don't have time for blogging about illness!   2/29/12 Update:  The Fibro World Blog seems to be offline for now.  I'm leaving the links in the hope that they will be back.  That was really a great blog and I hope Fibro Dot and her Fibro Mom are OK.  I never got around to doing all of the Georgia lawyers like I said I was going to in this post.  Oh well.    I've decided to blog about my Social Security Disability case.  I've held off on doing this becaus

Bones is one of my favorite TV shows; I'll just be glad when fibromyalgia is replaced as the whipping post by some other new and little known about disease.  Unfortunately for the new disease, that WILL happen! We're getting a lot of TV time from the pharmaceutical companies, but I dream of the day when people with FM will be guests on the talk shows, the news shows, something positive about us will be portrayed on the entertainment shows and no one anywhere will dare to make a mockery of such a horrible disease.   (Yes, I know they say it isn't a disease.  It's just a matter of time.  Mark my words.)  So I watched an episode of Bones awhile ago and the murderer was a teacher who, when she was caught said she had FM and that she had pushed a guy into a poisonous fish tank because he had taken a lot of her money for a false cure to FM; then she said killing the guy must have cured her FM because she hadn't felt any pain since! Puh-leeeez! Here's the te

Here's the Fibromyalgia is BULLSHIT Facebook page.  It has a whopping 113 people who "like" it. Those of us who are active on Facebook know that there are many FB groups (over 500) and pages (407 as of the publication of this post) that advocate support, a cure, all kinds of positive things, for FM.  There are tens of thousands of people who belong to these groups or who "like" these pages.  In spite of the fact that we outnumber this dinky little page by far, I think it needs to be removed because it contains hate speech and it targets people with a disease, people who often also have a disability.  Would FB tolerate a hate page called "Cancer is BULLSHIT?"  It's hard to even wrap your mind around the concept, isn't it? If you feel so called, please join me in asking FB to remove this page. Here are easy instructions: Go to the page by clicking here . Go to the bottom of the sidebar on the left side of the page, where it says "

And I've decided on the spur of the moment to participate.  Last time I tried this I lasted a week.  This time I'm going the try really hard to write faster and to shorten my posts by breaking them up into multiple posts.  So we'll see how it goes.