This article was first published on The Mighty on August 29th, 2016. Most of the links on this post are informational, but a few are affiliate links to help maintain this website.
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I'm writing this from my hospital bed on the 13th floor of a well-respected hospital in Chicago.

I'm lying here thinking, Why do they have 13th floors in hospitals, anyway? At this particular hospital it happens to be the infectious disease floor. It's my third visit to this floor; the friendly daytime nurse even recognized me.

Chronic Lyme disease is a controversial illness with little to no acceptance or understanding in Western medicine; but when we become acutely ill, we still have to go to the conventional emergency room or hospital. There are no integrative medicine emergency rooms…yet.

There are many serious symptoms of Lyme disease that could land you in the emergency room or the hospital, like seizures, paralysis, fainting, strange rashes, and the feeling of having a heart attack. For me, it's been a persistent bone infection.

Many Lyme patients avoid the emergency room out of the fear of being misdiagnosed or mistreated, because there is a lack of understanding of our complex illness. But even more so, we are afraid of being judged or told it is all in our head.

In the emergency room yesterday, the well-intentioned doctor listened and took notes on my complicated history—the years of autoimmunity, the bone infection, the eventual Lyme disease diagnosis—and then sweetly asked, "Are you an outdoorsy person? Where would you have been exposed to Lyme?" We are asked this all the time, even though the CDC published a study that ticks carrying Lyme disease are in almost half the counties in the United States.

When I am in the hospital or meeting a new doctor I have to make the decision whether or not to tell them about my Lyme disease. Do I tell them and risk being dismissed, or do I not tell them and risk hiding important information from a doctor?

Many Lyme patients choose to go with the second option, because it is just too painful to be told the illness you battle every single day simply doesn't exist. Lately, I've been going with the first option. I have this honesty complex, and I feel like eventually it will come out; I don't want to look like was hiding something.

The four-person infectious disease team crowded around my bed, and I felt all their eyes on me. A young resident asked the first question, "Why are you taking that medication?" Then, the head of the department asked in a condescending tone, "What is the name of your Lyme specialist?" A resident, who was about my age, said, "You’re the healthiest looking person we’ve seen all day." I guess she was trying to make me feel better.

They wrapped up their questions and then stepped outside my door. I tried not to listen to what they were saying. I heard someone mention "looking up symptoms on Google" and "sending blood work off to unverified labs," then it came, laughter, right outside my door.

I am a well-educated, intelligent person. I approach every problem with the utmost care and consideration. I had to find my diagnosis on my own with no help from conventional medicine. All I could do was sigh and tell myself, "They laugh at what they don't understand," and remain grateful and humble for the help they can provide me with my current issue.

My message for doctors and medical professionals is simple: Use your empathy training. Put yourself in your patient's shoes and think about what they may be feeling. 

​Imagine going to a place for help in a desperate moment, only to be told what you are have doesn't exist.

Imagine being told your terrifying symptoms are "all in your head."

Imagine being afraid to tell a doctor your diagnosis.

Imagine knowing the only doctor who can help you in an emergency probably doesn't know anything about your illness.

Imagine being dismissed because you don't look sick.

Imagine being made to feel ignorant about your illness when you've spent countless hours researching it.

Imagine being laughed at by a team of doctors.

I am capable of the same empathy. I understand the weighty responsibility doctors have to follow certain guidelines. To that I will ask two things. One, please educate yourself on Lyme disease and look at the controversy from both sides. Two, try saying something like this: "I trust you understand your body, but I see things from a different perspective. Let's discuss how we can work together on this."

While I was finishing this article there was a knock at my door. A hospital volunteer walked into my room with a beautiful vase of pink lilies and carnations from the Random Acts of Flowers program. I was reminded of the overwhelming kindness of people. My doctors here at the hospital want me to get better. Though their approach is not ideal, our goal is the same.
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"Give your stress wings and let it fly." - Terri Guillemets

This article was reprinted on ProHealth on June 8th, 2017. It was later removed for reasons outlined in this notice. Most of the links on this post are informational, but a few are affiliate links to help maintain this website.
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When I want to accomplish something new I find the "no turning back" approach to be the most effective. Humans in general are very good at talking ourselves out of things. For most of the us the first thing we do in the morning is hit the snooze button. Going to yoga is similar for me. I love yoga and what it does for my body and mind, but sometimes I'm good at talking myself out of a class.

Yoga is a big part of my healing process, and ideally I would take 3 classes a week. With chronic illness it's a challenge to work out at all, and right now I go to 0 to 2 gentle or restorative classes weekly.

I need to jump start my yoga practice. Here are some tips I will use to get myself to class and you can use for starting anything new in your life:

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5 Ways to Jump Start a Yoga Practice:

1. Put it on your calendar and schedule everything else around it.
If you want to attend an "Introduction to Yoga" class on Saturday afternoon, write down the date and time on your calendar, even if you aren't 100% ready to start. It also helps if you plan out your month, not your week. We believe we can do a lot of things in a month, but tend to think our weeks are too packed to add anything extra.

2. Tell someone else your plan.
Using the example from above, say your friend calls to invite you to lunch on Saturday afternoon—schedule the lunch after the yoga class. You're less likely to skip it if you told someone else you were going.

You can also bring it up in conversation, or write a Facebook status or Tweet that says, "Can't wait to take my first yoga class ever on Saturday." 

3. Invite someone to go with you.
Maybe the friend who called to invite you to lunch can go to yoga with you first, or if you have an adventurous friend bring them along. Be careful not to get trapped in the idea that you will only try new things if someone else comes along though, it will limit your options.

​4. Pay in advance. 
We are much less likely to back out of something if we've already paid for it. This is where sites like Groupon and Living Social are excellent, because you prepay (at a discount nonetheless) and therefore are more likely to go.

5. Offer yourself a reward for following through. 
My ultimate reward is a Chai Tea Latte with almond milk. Sometimes when I'm really nervous about something, I say to myself, "If you do it, you can stop by the Starbucks drive thru on the way home." I try not to do the opposite, punish myself when I don't follow through, this is when I offer myself forgiveness and write down the next class in my calendar. 

Plan a bigger reward for 3 or 6 months after your start date to keep you motivated. Maybe a new yoga mat or strap? I've got my eye a this cork block.

​What do you want to jump start in your life?

"Say yes, and you’ll figure it out afterwards." - Tina Fey

This article was originally published on The Mighty on August 1st, 2016. Most of the links on this post are informational, but a few are affiliate links to help maintain this website.

The voice inside my head said, "You need to write."

It was takeoff. My head was spinning and my stomach started churning. My seat was right on the wing, so I didn't have my go-to fix, which is to look out the window at the houses getting smaller and smaller. The airplane tilted all the way to the right and then all the way to the left. Just before I reached for the barf bag, the voice said, "Write."

Motion sickness has been one of the most persistent symptoms of my chronic Lyme disease. When my illness flares, driving makes me so sick I have to sit on the couch for half an hour after I get home and wait for the nausea to go away. It is getting better with treatment, but the last time I flew it reared its ugly head. I took out my laptop for a distraction and slowly my brain came back to me.

​Many people with chronic illness turn to writing as a way to cope with being sick. Some of the most beautiful writing comes out of a need to express pain. 

​For me, writing has always been the activity that takes me away from my symptoms. Moving my fingers over the keyboard to the tune of my thoughts soothes me in a way nothing else can. It puts me in a meditative-like state, and the words pour out of me like a vinyasa flow. Even on the days when the words come out awkwardly and clumsily, I push myself to keep typing. I can always fix it later; the purpose is to find my groove and forget about Lyme for a while.  
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Writing also helps people with chronic illness because it is therapeutic. There are a lot of things I can tell the computer screen that I can't tell my loved ones. When I'm with friends or family the words don't come out right. I usually come across as a complainer. The words come out better when I have time to think about what I want to say and write it down.

Chronic illness also leads to a lot of anger and frustration; writing takes those emotions and gets them out of your head. It's a cleansing process similar to therapy. When you feel like crying or screaming because you got bad test results or your medication is causing a nasty side effect, grab a pen and write it all out.

Writing seems like a solo practice, but for people with chronic illness it is creating communities all over the world. Thousands of people write or blog about their experiences. When we find each other on the internet it makes us feel less alone. It's a powerful thing to know someone out there is feeling the same way you do, even if you've never met.      

Last, but not least, writing spreads awareness. Even if all you can write is a 140-word tweet, you are spreading awareness. Websites and blogs have given a voice to people who feel silenced in one way or another. The more people who hear our stories, the more empathy and understanding there will be for our illnesses, which trickles down to more funding for research and treatment.

Writing is an easy activity to do from bed, and it doesn’t expend a lot of physical energy, which is ideal for people with chronic illness. And there are so many different things to write: tweets, blog posts, personal essays, articles, poems, books, plays, screenplays, letters to legislators…the list goes on and on.

Writing might not be your thing. I have a friend who says writing, even for fun, feels like an assignment. That's OK—writing doesn't have to be your "thing." Find any activity that helps you cope with your illness. It could be singing, woodworking or rocking your baby to sleep. These things might not be all that easy to do on a plane, but should work in most other circumstances.

I was up in the air for two and a half hours from a layover in Dallas to my hometown of Minneapolis. After I started writing, the flight went by in an instant and my motion sickness faded into the background, like the hum of the airplane noise.

"Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer." - Ray Bradbury