My Blog's Mission

Hello everyone!  Welcome to my blog, obviously named, "Laughing From My Sickbed..."

I started this blog as a result of many reasons, all of which pushed me into this project I've taken on for reasons having to do with everything other than what you'd expect.  The "best" and funniest outcome - or the gall to take this project on - is and remains the fact that I am absolutely techno-impaired!  Yes, through lots of gnashing of teeth and tearing out of what little hair I do have, I've learned the hard way how to do things on blogger, but it was and still is, a hard road, and I'm a definite work in progress.  (I'm embarrassed to confess just how many hours a typical post takes me to "produce," with technical difficulties such as formatting being one of my biggest challenges.)  I ask that you bear with me as I struggle along and try to present my life experiences and my personal knowledge of the illnesses I discuss.

The other point that needs to be explained is that I'm not as uneducated as I may at first appear!  In a previous life, about 38 years ago if anyone's counting, I was a young student-teacher in a high school and then a graduate student who taught Freshman English on the university level.  I used to be a pretty good writer (she says so modestly!).  I corrected and graded papers written by my students, had one-on-one conferences with them to discuss how to write a better and stronger paper, and I myself wrote papers galore, which were in turn graded by my professors.  Later I worked for two "big" publishing houses in NYC.  

And therein lies the embarrassment.  As I look at so many of the posts written since the very end of February, I cringe when I see all the mistakes I make and all the mistakes the dictator, my iPad, makes for me - ones I don't catch, in the form of dropped letters, words, garbled, unintended words and so forth.  To be honest, if I were that teacher now, half my posts would receive a huge "F" from me!   But that's just one more "F'" I'd get, for a dismally embarrassing "fibro-brain."

Now as to the content of this blog.  At first glance I seem to be all over the place.  Instead of pursuing the noble cause of advocacy, for example, I'm not really going there.  Those days are, I'm afraid, beyond me now.  I'm no longer young, I've become way too ill and I've never been a person who likes confrontation, a perfect trifecta for me.  Hubby, who's featured a lot in this blog, along with my adult children (as YOUNG children) and a bit of my BFF of 42 years - HER privacy I TRY to respect - has forever made jokes about the lengths I'll go to in order to avoid confrontation.  

However, there is one exception and WHAT an exception that is: protecting the little ones, even though my own "little ones" are now adults and the ones I am protecting are ones I've adopted along the way from clicking with someone in the hospital to my heart melting for some whom I've met since I started this blog adventure to even joining twitter and becoming close to a few there as well.  So, when I go into lioness mode, watch out!

Furthermore, I think my blog's a bit different too in that I'm not just trying to help make the world aware of this horrific and cruel, yet very invisible core illness, CFIDS/ME/CFS and fibromyalgia and all the complications that arise because of these nasty entities: migraines, severe insomnia (understatement), orthostatic intolerance, sensitivity to smells, sound and light, skin problems, adult growth hormone deficiency, vertigo, daily fevers, swollen lymph nodes, thyroid problems...the list is almost endless.  Since I keep acquiring new conditions and try to live with them (38 years is a heck of a long time!), I hope that passing on my experiences and tips helps others survive.

Indeed, I also want to cover ALL aspects of life that have to do with living with these illnesses.  So, instead of choosing one aspect of the illness, I'm taking a more "holistic" approach.  I write about science and I write about skincare; I write about tips to surviving an ER visit to surviving the rashes, hives, canker sores that can afflict.  I write about a book I particularly liked to people (such as Dr. Janet Travell) who were my role models or women I admired for their unique contributions to medicine at a time when women didn't even have the right to vote!  I write about everyday life to crazy first-generation stories which are always somehow tied in with CFIDS/ME/CFS and/or fibromyalgia.

I hope you're up for, at times, the very wild ride I'm finding myself taking us on.  And I do so hope you "get" my humor.  Laughter TRULY is perhaps the best medicine out there and since we've always been a family which loves to laugh and laughs A LOT, we've been ever so lucky because of the so many freakish and unusual health problems we've had in the last few years.  Normally, we've always been an almost embarrassingly healthy family with the one exception being me - and WHAT an exception THAT is.  Lately, we've been an embarrassingly unhealthy family which had to have been caused by accidentally breaking a few mirrors.  (What other explanation can there possibly be?)

I hope - and rather think - that you can find what you need on this site.  I also hope that you will join this site as a follower or at least make comments when you're well enough or moved enough to do so: I absolutely LOVE comments and I LOVE hearing from readers.  And in those comments, any suggestions or observations are always appreciated.

Note: since this blog was started, I've received messages from a disturbing number of readers who can't seem to make comments.  I've tried to track down the problem, especially since I know that others have had no problems making comments.  However, I've had no luck resolving this issue and if you are one who DOES have trouble making comments, please let me know, since I've not given up quite yet on that unpleasant front!  I have a Facebook page that one resourceful reader found as a way of communicating with me during Hurricane Sandy.  Finally, if you know what the problem may be, please let me know!  I really want this blog to be a safe haven, even if it's a 5-10 minute vacation away from our problems or a 5-minute occasional rant or venting.

Finally, I am not endorsing any products.  If you've noticed, I don't even have any ads on my site.  For example, I take on doctors and/or the medical establishment when I see a concern that needs to be addressed and yet I defend doctors and/or the medical establishment when that is called for.  In other words, I'm an equal opportunity critic as well as praiser - sort of the way I raised my kids!

And so, on with the show!