The ICI Experience:

This is good! Dance is my favorite form of exercise. I'll be posting more on how we can get our bodies moving in a healthy way.

It seems to me that this is one of those situations where the more you need the benefits of the practice, the harder it is to do. Like meditation. It's been my observation that the more unsettled my mind (life) is, the harder it is to just sit down and be quite for fifteen or twenty minutes. And the more we need the benefits that gratitude can bring like human growth, joy, creativity, vitality, delight, hope and connection, the harder it is to be grateful. I offer this post as a way to possibly evoke a sense of gratitude, in spite of the fact that we live with chronic illness. From Seasons of Grace: The Life Giving Practice of Gratitude (emphaisis added by me) "Gratitude — as conviction, practice, and discipline — is an essential nutrient, a kind of spiritual amino acid for human growth, joy, and creativity. Take away the daily experience and expression of gratitude, and life is quickly diminished. Like a weakened immune system , the spirit is left vulnerable to the disea...

HealthInfo Island on Second Life Yesterday I visited HealthInfo Island in Second Life for the first time. I teleported down close to the beginning of the Path of Support, then I meandered down the path, which is a line of billboards of the over 60 different support groups found in Second Life so far. A couple I found memorable are the board for the Online Schizophrenic Hallucination Demo (I'm going to have to try that) and of course the Fibromyalgia Support, but there is also a Neurological Disorders Research and Support Committee founded by Maria Mouroutsos. This is the first, and only SL group for neurological disorders, for those who have them, and for friends and family that want to learn. This group shares research information, tips on how to cope with some of the strange, and rheumotological effects, like fibromyalgia, and also to just share funny things, to help ease a little bit of the frustration. This is also the first time I've actually felt like fibromyalgia mi...

Well, here it is November 1, the beginning of NaBloPoMo. And here I go making an attempt to post every day this month. Should be interesting, especially considering the holiday and the fact that I'll be in Florida for a week. We'll see how it goes. I found this slide show on the Second Life Health Info Island page , which is a part of the Second Life Library 2.0 site . Consumer Health Information Gets a Second LIfe From: CarolPerryman , 6 months ago | View | Upload your own "Second Life is a three-dimensional virtual world that has received enormous amounts of press over the last year. In a grant-funded project, a consumer health library has been created in Second Life to provide reference and consumer health support to Second Life residents. Carol Perryman is the virtual world`s first consumer health librarian. This presentation will provide an overview of the grant-funded initiative, including challenges encountered in creating a consumer health library. Compariso...

We wish getting over it was as easy as Dr. Scherger makes it sound; or as this pole vaulter makes it look! This post is a sequel to Chronic Monday: Be Well Not Medicalized 4 FM...? . I have to admit that I decided at the last minute to take it easy on Dr. S. I found a much more in-depth description of his career (on RevolutionHealth.com, who would have guessed?), and in addition to his medical degree he also has a Masters of Public Health (MPH). His first job after school was as a migrant health physician for two years in California. Now he may have had to do this to pay off a student loan or something, but still he did it. And the rest of his record seems rather stellar and exemplary. I kinda hate to drag him through the mud for one blog post, no matter how inaccurate, insensitive and insulting it is. So I'm just going to pull some sound bites out of the 25 or so comments that were made to his post and to my review of his post, all of them negative, then in a future post I...

I will do my best to participate. It should be good for me. And maybe for my readers. I will have to post shorter - much shorter. And I will see what that is like and if daily might be a better way for me to go. The Randomizer is just an easy way to check out all the participants who are in NaBloPoMo. To be part of the Randomiser, make sure you're registered at the official website and have your Blog URL in your profile. So: What is it? It's NaBloPoMo, November, the month in which you post something to your blog every day, in accordance with the National Blog Posting Month challenge! "Last year everybody just went for it, posting thirty days in a row and maybe hoping to win a prize in the random drawing. This year, for those of you who suspect you might run out of gas, maybe you'd like to try blogging on a theme. Follow a news story for the month; get deeper into an issue that you want to educate yourself about; keep us abreast of how your yoga practice / daily ...

I said this was going to be a fun post so that's what it will be. I'm not going to put any quotes or statistics in about how good Second Life is for people with chronic illness, even though it is. Just fun stuff. For now. My name in SL is Verna Jewell. My grandmother's name was Verna and I had to pick a last name from a list provided to me by SL when I first signed up. This picture is Verna, v. 1.0. I'm into fashion and always have been. There's lots of it in SL. I might even be able to design some myself when I'm figure out how to do it... You can buy or design your own: Tattoos, skins, gestures, hair, eyes, accessories, clothing, furniture, houses... whatever you can think of. And there are even art galleries. The artists actually sell virtual and/or real life art. Tonight, Wednesday 10/24, a character from an episode of CSI NY will escape into Second Life, with Second Life residents taking part in the "investigation." This story will carr...

20,603 Blogs Participated 23,327 Blog Posts (Results obtained using Google Blog Search) More general stats at http://BlogActionDay.org . I searched on "Blog Action Day" and the different chronic illnesses that I wrote about, also using Google Blog Search. Turns out I didn't have a whole lot of company. Here are my results. On Blog Action Day there were: 2* blog posts Fibromyalgia 2 on Chronic Illness 1* on Gulf War Syndrome 1* on Endometriosis 2* on Multiple Chemical Sensitivity 2 on Food Allergies 0 on Temporal Mandibular Joint Syndrome 1* on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome 1* on Myalgic Encephelitis *including me Actually, some of my topics didn't get picked up by the search and I don't know why and I don't know enough to figure it out and correct it. The learning curve. I wish it would curve faster. It would be interesting to see if the number of people writing about environmental illness (EI) when asked to write about the environment increases as time goes ...

More info One other, equally interesting topic I'll mention: The Habitation of Justice blog is having a contest where you can win $100 just for backlinking to this blog. Get the details here. The blog is pretty interesting too. I'm glad to have found it, will write the author one day about my experience of requesting reasonable accommodation for a disability, from a state agency.

I am SO proud to have been a part of this. Below is a copy of the email I got from the Blog Action Day Team. On Monday I'll see if I can do something in the Chronic Monday blog post to relate their statistics to the issues I wrote about. The Wrap Up The very first Blog Action Day was an unprecedented success and we've got the final wrap up where the site used to be at http://blogactionday.org complete with statistics, sample posts, details of the huge amount of press coverage we had all over the world, quotes and more. It's a must see. Please feel free to spread the word around as it's great for people to really see what we achieved together. ****** Thanks And if I could just say a huge thank you to every single one of you, all 20,603 registered bloggers who took the plunge even if it meant going off their regularly scheduled programming and stood up to be counted. Also thank you to everyone who helped out with the effort, in particular Leo Babauta whose contacts, wr...

I'm writing about the environment today, for Blog Action Day. Years ago, coal miners took canaries down into the coal mines with them, because canaries are more sensitive to the poisonous coal gases than human beings are. When a bird started acting sick, the miners beat a hasty retreat. The canary usually died. The following is an excerpt from "Canaries In A Coal Mine", by Kevin Gregg, DC, from the Chronic Syndrome Support Association site : "Have you ever considered that those of you experiencing FMS, CFS, MCS and GWS symptoms might simply be canaries down the collective mine shaft? What if, like those canaries, you were simply the early warning system for this culture. What if your experiences were exposing mounting health risks for everyone? You are, I suspect, at the far end of a continuum that all of us are on to varying degrees. Placement on this continuum depends only on the degree a person is stressed, starved and poisoned by their life and environm...

Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum is a leading practitioner of complementary medicine (a combination of traditional and alternative) in the treatment of FM & CFS/ME. I've been waiting months for his site to finish being redesigned so I could do this program. And I was going to pay full price. I figured it would be cheaper than actually going to the doctor, if I could even find a Dr. who know what to do, out here is backwoods southern Georgia where I live. The short program is normally $88. Description Short Questionnaire What is it? For a Limited time we will be offering our short program for free. You will need to go through the checkout process and use the following code in the "discount code" box. This discount code 6HAJ7B9QTVDG will allow you access to the program. This promotion will run from October 2007 through February 29, 2008. A credit card will be needed to create your account but the discount code will make the total zero. The Short Program is a simplified que...

Sequel to this post here . There's a blog post about FM on Revolution Health (copy and link at the end of this post) that has had me in a tizzy ever since I first saw it on 9/10. I originally found out about this blog post on Dominie Bush's 9/10/07 newsletter . (Thanks again, Dom, for the great job you do and have done for many years in bringing us excellent and timely info about what's going on with FM & CFS.) This is what Dominie's newsletter blurb said: HORRID FIBROMYALGIA ARTICLE A reader sent this link--outrageous!!! And by a doctor?? http://www.revolutionhealth.com/blogs/drscherger/be-well-not-medicali-6867?msc=A62775 Here's part of what he said: "If you think you have Fibromyalgia, get over it. Do not get trapped, or medicalized, into thinking you have a chronic health condition. Reduce stress, focus on your purpose in life, be positive, get restful sleep and regular exercise. You too can be well!" Good grief!!! There is a place for pos...

One of the reasons I started to write this blog was to keep friends and family informed of my status. It's turned into so much more, I've kind of neglected writing about where I'm at. So I've decided that once a month, on the first Wednesday, I'll post an update on me. I've missed the first Wednesday this month, so I'll just mention the big thing that's happened is I got the denial of my application for Social Security Disability benefits from the Social Security Administration. This was the expected outcome of the application. Now I will get a lawyer and appeal the denial decision. I was thinking of using a lawyer I found on the internet who is based in Atlanta. They would have started my case before the denial came through. Since I have the denial now, I'm going to check out a local lawyer who is recommended by a fellow fibromite, whose opinion I respect very much. Maybe with the local lawyer I won't have to fill out all the paperwork ...

I'm going to set a realistic goal for posting to this site. Once a week, on Mondays I will post a quality piece. I'll call it "Chronic Mondays." One good thing about not being able to work: I don't have those rough Mondays. All of my days are pretty much the same.

New cartoon video by The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights says it all. FTCR is a non-profit, non-partisan consumer watchdog group. They "fight corrupt corporations and crooked politicians every day." Health care crisis as depicted by pirates - music by Austin Lounge Lizards This organization seems to deal mostly with events in California.

There's only one rule and it's simple, just "Blog Against Abuse". Any kind of abuse. The topic I've chosen to blog about is verbal abuse. I first became aware of the concept of verbal abuse in the mid-1990's, I guess. I was wandering through the eclectic mini bookstore of the university where I matriculated and then worked for several years, and the book titled "The Verbally Abusive Relationship" by Patricia Evans just jumped out at me. (There's a slide show of links at the end of this post, to Ms. Evans' books on Amazon - which are currently the best books available on the subject.) I read the bulleted list (below) from the back cover of the book and answered 'Yes!' to every question when apparently just one 'yes' would have made the book required reading: • Does your partner seem irritated or angry at you several times a week? • Does he deny being angry when he clearly is? • Do your attempts to discuss feelings of pain ...