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My Experience Fundraising for Medical Expenses
Today I want to share about an organization that can help chronic illness patients fundraise for medical expenses. Chronic illness is expensive, and I am so thankful to have recently found out about Help Hope Live, which can help with co-pays, prescriptions costs, insurance premiums, and more.
In this post, I’ll share about my experience fundraising with this organization, so you can see if it would be a good fit to help you or a loved one living with chronic health conditions or a serious injury.
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How to Find Financial Assistance for Chronic Illness Expenses
Did you know that patients with chronic illness can apply for grants to help with medical expenses? Me neither! I’m going to share about several organizations that provide medical grants and financial assistance.
I can’t believe I’ve been seriously ill for over six years and am just now hearing something like this exists! I thought medical grants were something only doctors or researchers could apply for.
These programs may be able to help with costs like copays, insurance premiums, prescription costs, and more.
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My Go To Natural Skin Care Products
I’m so excited to share this list of my favorite natural skin care products with you! It’s taken me many years to find lotions, soaps, shampoos, etc. that don’t flare up my health conditions. I’m really passionate about this topic because I think everyone should have the tools and information to avoid toxins and make healthier decisions in their everyday life.
I hope that all the products I’ve researched and tried will help you on your journey to better health.
What we put on our bodies matters, especially for those of us with chronic illness. These are the skincare products that don’t aggravate my asthma, fibromyalgia, and other chronic conditions.
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Why To Use Natural Skin Care Products If You Have A Chronic Illness
Why choose natural skin care products? I’m going to share a quick overview of some of the potential health impacts of chemicals that you’d think are safe—after all, they’re in everyday products like lotion, shampoo, deodorant, and soap. I hope this post is a useful resource for learning more about the ingredients in skin care products so you can choose healthier options, especially if you have a chronic illness.
If you’re already dealing with chronic illness or health issues (like I am—more on that below) it’s even more important to address irritants and triggers that could be contributing to underlying conditions—or just making overall health worse.
And even if you’re healthy, there are many reasons everyone should avoid harmful chemicals lurking in skin care products.
Here’s a quick look at chemicals to avoid, where you can find more research about those chemicals, and resources for finding healthier alternatives.
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The Helpful Chart My Doctor Recommended I Create
Do you ever discover a useful resource for your health that just makes you want to share it? That’s the way I felt when my doctor recommended I create this chart. This is a helpful way to prepare for a doctor’s visit. It led to a lot of light bulb moments as I considered the future direction of my treatment plan, especially when it comes to medication and supplements.
This chart will help you streamline appointments by having more information at your fingertips, whether you’re meeting with your doctor in person or doing televisits. (I’ve actually found televisits practical because I use up less energy and can pull up documents about my health history on my computer…or ask my mom to run into the next room to check the dosage on my supplements, LOL! What do you guys think of them?)
I feel I’ve hit a dead end with my health and haven’t been seeing improvement (so I’ve been trying to focus on the little things I can do).
That’s why I recently saw my naturopathic oncologist to get a new perspective. I hadn’t seen him in awhile—I had thyroid cancer three years ago and have other chronic health conditions including dysautonomia, fibromyalgia, an autoimmune disease, and asthma.
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Ups And Downs: Summer, Chronic Illness, and a New Normal
Hello friends, I’m so excited to be able to join A Chronic Voice’s link up this month. Summer is finally here, but unfortunately, that doesn’t mean a vacation from chronic illness. So I’m going to share what I’ve found helpful and how I’m coping with the new normal.
This link up is a way for chronic illness bloggers to connect by writing posts based on the same prompts. I found it so helpful last month to use the prompts as a jumping off point to not only write a blog post, but also to do some journaling for myself to process everything going on in the world and my own life.
This month, I’m using the prompts to share a little bit about what I’ve been up to lately creatively, what I’ve been struggling with healthwise, and how I’m continuing to adjust to the new normal.
The prompts for this month are Bothering, Demanding, Telecommunicating, Tolerating, and Nourishing.
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Mid-Year Reflections In A Year Of Pandemic: June Linkup
I can’t believe it’s been over a year since I joined A Chronic Voice’s linkup for the first time! I’ve been meaning to join this way for chronic illness bloggers to connect since, but life intervened (aka symptoms have severely limited my writing time). This month, I was thrilled that not only did I have the mental bandwidth to participate, but also that the prompts aligned with several things bouncing around in my head. Chronic illness in a pandemic presents its own unique challenges. (PS here’s my last linkup post.)
I hope you all are doing as well as you can be. Those of you who love the sunshine, I hope that you are also enjoying the warmer days. I love that the weather will be warmer (in upper 60s or 70s) for about three days, and then rainy for two days—this gives me a good dose of vitamin D when I can sit and walk a little outside.
The rain gives me a break from feeling like I *have* to get outside; we call that pressure to soak up as much warmth as we can “sun guilt” in the Pacific Northwest. The cottonwood trees had the air filled with tufts of white that looked like slow-drifting snow up until recently. Everything is blooming early, including my beauty bush, which is covered in bees and hummingbirds. (Ok, I’ve seen THREE hummers at once, so not exactly “covered!”)
In the world beyond my yard, things are moving ahead as Washington counties move into Phase 2 of coming out of quarantine/social distancing. (My county was added to the list June 5.) High risk populations are to “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” through Phase 3. I’ll talk more about this below.
Let’s dive in. The themes for this month are Searching, Hoping, Honoring, Traumatizing, and Responding.
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The Story Behind My New Blog Name: Starlight through the Storm
Ta-da! You may have noticed that my blog has a new logo as well as a new name! I thought I’d share a behind-the-scenes look at the inspiration behind both. I hope this will give you more insight into what you’ll find on my blog, as well as help you know a little more about the person who runs it.
I’ve literally been trying to pick a name before I even started blogging—over two years ago! (Yep, my blog had its anniversary in March and I kinda let it slip by. Oops!) I’m sure glad I didn’t wait until I had the “perfect” name picked before I started my blogging journey. (I think you should dive into blogging even if you don’t feel 100% ready.)
From poems to PR pieces, the titles have always been a challenge for me. So I’ve been brainstorming (for, ahem, years)…how to choose a blog name that sums up living with chronic illness, and not just surviving but thriving? I wanted to choose a name that sounded specific enough but was also broad enough that it would allow me to talk about all the things that bring me joy when my health turns life upside down—such as my faith, my love of words (and books!) and creativity.
Here’s the story behind coming up with a name for this blog, and why it’s special to me.
