Tag: chronicpain
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Biofeedback: Another Tool in Your Kit
Chronic pain is something that can be treated in many ways. When I first got migraines, they were sudden and devastating. Within six months I went from perfectly healthy to migraines that lasted days to a week at a time. They were incredibly painful. I was unable to move and barely even able to go…
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The Habits of Pain
It’s hard to find that balance between pushing too hard and giving up. But if you want things to change, laying down new habits is a start.
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Walking Dogs In The Rain
People who write love songs about walking in the rain don’t live in Ohio. In December. I do. I’m just going to say, cold rain is not my idea of romantic. Or comfortable. Miserable. It does come to mind when I think of the word ‘miserable’. I bring this up, because I was thinking about…
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News 5 Cleveland Talks About 1step2life
We were very excited that Taneisha Cordell of News5 Cleveland, an ABC affiliated covered the development of 1step2life. Development of the app was inspired by my son, Sean’s, struggles with intractable persistent pain. He talks here about his struggles and how 1step2life has helped him feel empowered to take back his life. For their full…
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504s & IEPS: Children Have The Right To Go To School
Although there are many things about living with a chronic condition that are tough for children and their parents, school is one of the most frustrating. This is a brief introduction to IEPs and 504s – the two major legal mechanisms governing the provision of educational services to students with disabilities in the United States.…
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Being Organized Is Even More Important When You’ve Got No Energy To Spare
I write a lot about organizing, because I have too much to do and very few spoons to spare. I also know that if I don’t write things down, they spin around in my head and keep me from sleeping. If we try to keep everything in our head without an organizational system, we keep…
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Sleep & Pain Rehab
Pain Rehab: Building Strength To Push Back Pain People living with pain are most successful at taking back their lives when they take an active role in their recovery. (That’s one of the reasons that 1step2life focuses on emotions, activities, and functioning.) For most of us, there is no ‘magic jelly bean’ that will suddenly…
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Don’t Tell Me Everything Happens “For A Reason”
Platitudes can hurt people in pain just as much as illness.
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Neuroscience 101
Feeling pain is an essential function of the brain and nervous system. Healthy pain keeps you safe when you touch something hot. It tells you to stop when you’ve exercised and your heart and lungs aren’t providing your muscles with enough oxygen. It reminds you to move when you’ve been sitting too long. Chronic pain,…
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Allodynia: Smell the Roses
Focusing all your attention on one manageable area of sensation can drown out the sensation of pain.
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Hydration Tip 1
Hydration is every doctor’s go to recommendation for anyone living with chronic pain. But it helps. Your cells can’t function properly without sufficient water. Not drinking enough causes pain all by itself that can’t be distinguished from pain due to illness. Plus – as I always tell my son – if you drink enough water,…
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Are You Faking It?
Faking being sick? I’m faking being well. And not that successfully.
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Incomplete Acts, Everyday Anxiety, and Getting Things Done
Four strategies to organize work and decrease anxiety.
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Almost there . . .
We’ve been feeling like that pilot attacking the Death Star in Star Wars.
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School: The Big Picture
Families need to work together towards a shared goal: helping children grew into healthy happy adolescents and adolescents make successful transitions to adulthood.
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Control Your Focus
I’ll be honest. I spend my life crazy stressed. I have a job that my husband describes as ‘flexible – you can work any 60 hours a week you like’. And then I have two more jobs – I am Editor in Chief of the Journal of Adolescence and I’m also starting this company. And…
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Doctor! Doctor! It hurts when I do this.
Doctor! Doctor! It hurts when I do this! Well . . . don’t do this.
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It’s hard being a parent
It’s so hard as a parent when you are desperately hoping your child will just make it to school and squeak through to graduation. And so hard to listen to even your dearest friends fret about things that you’d give your eye teeth to be worrying about. It’s just hard.
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Everyone’s got a friend with ‘the’ cure.
You know they mean well. You know they care. In fact, they’re trying to be sympathetic and make a connection. But when you tell them you have severe chronic migraines and they say ‘oh yeah, my sister-in-law gets migraines too’, and then ask if you if you’ve tried Excedrin Migraine . . . . No,…
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New Edition Released of Parenting a Child in Chronic Pain
As a developmental psychologist who has studied parenting on four continents, I can tell you a lot about raising teenagers. But nothing prepared me for watching my son shaking under the covers flinching from the light, and unable to speak from pain.
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