BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

I've heard it. Many of the other invisibly, chronically ill people I know hear it too. That comment: "You look fine" or "you don't LOOK sick." It used to make me mad - now I just feel disrespected. There are still a handful of people in my life who knew me before. Before I was swept out of life's current by something I can't see. Before I put on a lot of weight due to illness, drugs and surgeries -- and despite appropriate exercise and a healthy diet. Before I spent 75% of my time in bed. This thing I am now? I don't even recognize it. The next time someone tells you they are ill when they look fine - before you make that comment - think. Can you SEE a headache? Can you see early stages of cancer? What does a person who is trying to handle pain look like? Are they ' well ' if they don't have a cane? (By the way, I should use one - I just refuse.) And what is God trying to tell us all with these illness? To be less jud

(for D., gone but not forgotten) (March 8, 1957 - January 1, 2000) Introduced by another sociopath I had the misfortune to know in November 1975, D. wielded svengali -like control over me for some time. After a while it was control by fear.  There was physical, emotional, psychological and sexual abuse.  But I covered it up - knowing no one back them would believe me thanks to D.'s smear campaigns.  Back then I knew nothing about sociopaths, brainwashing or trauma bonding. When we first met and he took me out he was very charming and came on VERY strong.  I found out later he didn't believe I had a boyfriend in high school. When he found out I did (t he boyfriend wrote me all the time and came to our college to visit me.  D ran into us in the college dining hall ) he freaked out. I later learned that D. had taken off with his parent's credit card for a motel in town (off-campus) and holed up there getting high and railing about me for 2 days when my ex-boyfr

By Dr. Mark E. Meaney Patient rights are under siege, as evidenced in a recent survey conducted by the National Institute for Patient Rights (NIPR). NIPR staff compiled the results based on responses from 100 randomly selected, former hospital patients who took part in the study. The results of the survey show that, despite billions spent on advances in medical technology, patients daily experience an erosion of their rights “at the hospital bedside.” Ironically, it may be a consequence of the success of science in medicine. Among those responding to essay questions, the following was a typical scenario. A hospital admits a loved one with “complications” (a medical euphemism for “we really don’t know all that’s going on here, but there are several organs involved”). While the loved one rests in bed, a line of doctors and nurses seems to form at the door. One after another, doctors enter the room, make a few comments, then turn around and exit. Primary care physicians refer patien

Living with an invisible disability isn't easy. Living with any disability can be soul-wrenching. But the invisibly disabled get a special sort of prejudice and disdain from the healthy public that has to be one of the circles of Dante's hell. Hard enough that we have to go through rounds of doctors to finally ferret out what is wrong with us; only to be accused of doctor shopping . But when we finally are diagnosed, many of us have to give up our dignity, our dreams and a lot of people we considered friends don't stick around too long, either. Yesterday I had to go to pick up some medication with one of my children. I pulled into the handicapped spot and put up my placard. When I came out I went around to the back of my car and pulled a small box out to place it in the back seat for easier access when I got home. As I was getting back into the driver's seat I noticed a woman standing on the passenger side of my car, looking it up and down... glaring. &qu

LIVES DERAILED Excerpted from The Autoimmune Epidemic: Bodies Gone Haywire in a World Out of Balance -- and the Cutting-Edge Science that Promises Hope ~~~~~~~~ Most of us, at some juncture in our lives, have played out in our minds how devastating it would be to have our doctor hand down a cancer diagnosis or to warn us that we are at risk for a heart attack or stroke. Magazine articles, television dramas, and news headlines all bring such images home. But consider an equally devastating health crisis scenario, one that you rarely hear spoken about openly, one that receives almost no media attention. Imagine the slow, creeping escalation of seemingly amorphous symptoms: a tingling in the arms and fingers, the sudden appearance of a speckled rash across the face, the strange muscle weakness in the legs when climbing stairs, the fiery joints that emerge out of nowhere -- any and all of which can signal the onset of a wide range of life-altering and often debilitating autoimmu