turquoise background, with white text: "I did it my way: Guiding your own medical wellness journey: off label LDN for fibromyalgia). The right side of is a picture of a bottle of prescription medication
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I Did It My Way! Directing Your Wellness Journey

I met Katie a year or two ago. As she and I discussed our health experiences, I found myself especially fascinated with how she discovered LDN and how helpful she’d found it. As she shared her experience of negotiating her treatment with her doctor, I thought it would be a great piece of experience to…

an orange slice on a dark yellow background. Half of the orange is covered by white pills
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Food can be medicine too: the power and danger of special diets

One of the things you’ll find if you start researching medical conditions is that there are often dietary suggestions made—things to add (or remove) from your diet, suggestions for what you should (or shouldn’t) eat, and suggestions for when and how to eat. It can easily become overwhelming, and it can also put your health…

Close-up of a Filipinx woman with a filtering face mask, sitting at a table with notebook and pen. She has colorful flower earrings and headphones on while looking into the distance.
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Five ways that recording your health history can improve your life

I have been living with chronic conditions, both physical and mental, since I was a kid. I’ve been encouraged to write about it, talk about it, think about it, and then put it all aside and move forward with my life. There are good reasons for doing these things. Today, I want to talk to…

Alison smiles at the camera
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Lessons learned from 2020

So it’s once again time for A Chronic Voice’s monthly linkup. This month’s words are beginning, symbolizing, enduring, revealing, gracing. As it is January, I’m going to write about the concepts these words bring up for me and what lessons I’ve learned from 2020. Beginning the new year with new medication coverage The headache started in…

signs pointing in different directions with a sunset in the background
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Learning to pivot: Recognizing your choices with the greatest impact

Being disabled or chronically ill is often accompanied by a sense of your world shrinking. There are things that you could do, but now can’t. There are places you could go, but are now more challenging or less fun, or more stressful or difficult. Options seem to decrease, and the world often seems just a…

The challenge of selecting your best healthcare plan
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The challenge of selecting your best healthcare plan

Open Enrollment is starting soon, and with all of the shakeups that have come with this year, you may be dealing with a different or new set of decisions to make in regards to your or a family member’s participation in the US healthcare system. If you aren’t sure what type of plans may be…

Medicare (dis)Advantage: Why Medicare Advantage plans don’t live up to the name
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Medicare (dis)Advantage: Why Medicare Advantage plans don’t live up to the name

Medicare Advantage is an alternative to original Medicare.  The name is disturbingly misleading. It isn’t actually Medicare, and often getting it puts the client at a disadvantage. What do I mean? Well, Medicare Advantage Plans are really private insurance plans that replace original Medicare. They do not need to follow Medicare’s rules and while aspects of…

pills in hand

Could your medication be part of the problem?

With many conditions, medication is often part of the treatment process.  There are risks and rewards to medications, but at times those risks feel huge, and the rewards feel distant and difficult to reach.  So many medications are now being advertised on TV with a message of hope, followed by a seemingly unending list of…