Monthly Archives: July 2008
Disrupted.
Living with chronic illness in your twenties and thirties can be difficult. During this time, most people are planning careers, families, and financial stability. Many with chronic illnesses are also planning those things, but also have to balance doctor appointments, emergency room visits, and battles with health insurance companies.
Using her own experiences as a person with multiple rare conditions, Laurie Edwards explores early adulthood complicated by chronic illness in Life Disrupted: Getting Real About Chronic Illness in Your Twenties and Thirties. Not only does she document her growth out of a pediatric patient into an adult patient, but she interviews others who have made the same long leap. Those who weren’t afflicted as children are also covered, highlighting the problems faced when you must adapt to a chronic condition in order to thrive or survive.
Every aspect of life is covered – from developing a health care team to maintaining an active social life to creating a career that is fulfilling AND flexible. In other words, this is an inspiring guide to keeping it all together in spite of the challenges that chronic illness brings.
The physical that wasn’t…or was it?
Bronchitis. I have it. In the middle of summer. But that’s not important right now.
What is important is that my primary care practice has no record of my last physical (April 2007). Yes, I’m a little late on this year’s physical, but to say that I hadn’t had one in 2 1/2 years was shocking and terribly wrong. I certainly did have a physical of the girlie variety the day before we left for Hawaii that month and year. The practice already had electronic medical records when I started seeing providers there in January 2006, so it’s not like my chart was misplaced.
Argh. Perhaps it is time for a new primary care provider.
