Any parent will tell you that parenting is hard. Parenting while trying to manage a chronic illness is even harder. But despite the plethora of chronic illnesses I have to manage, the one that has made parenting the most challenging is a spinal CSF leak. My leak, which the experts at Mayo Clinic discovered…
Chronic illness makes life hard. Multiple chronic illnesses make life even harder. That has been my experience since I first started collecting chronic illnesses like baseball cards about 9 years ago. (Does anyone collect baseball cards anymore, or did I just really date myself? But I’ve never collected baseball cards, so that’s probably a…
It was a warm summer morning when I arrived at the pain management center. I was there to have an epidural blood patch for a suspected spinal CSF leak. If the blood patch worked, it would be more or less diagnostic of a spinal CSF leak. My MRI imaging was read as normal, so…
The leak started with a play kitchen. I was home alone on December 17, 2020. My husband was out of town visiting his parents with our daughter, Bean. I spent much of the day wrapping Christmas presents for our family, preparing for two Christmases in the time of COVID. All I had left to…
Medical gaslighting is, unfortunately, an all too common experience in healthcare, especially among individuals with chronic illness. It’s something I’d known about throughout the years of my own chronic illnesses. Yet somehow, it had never happened to me. That is, until a few weeks ago. What is Medical Gaslighting? The term gaslighting may sound familiar….
Trigger warning: This post contains discussions of infertility and trying to become a mother. Please steer clear if these topics make you uncomfortable. Those who have followed my blog since its beginning in July 2016 likely know a lot more about me than my more recent followers who’ve hopped onto this funky train since…
July 1st marked two years since I started ribbonrx.com. A lot of bloggers call that a Blogiversary, which I suppose is just as good a term as any! In the wee hours of July 1, 2016 I tentatively published a brief post explaining what the name ribbonrx means. Later that same day, I published…
Title: Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe In Women’s Pain Author: Abby Norman Genre: Memoir Published: 2018 Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ I don’t often (ok, ever) write single-post reviews about books I’ve read. I read far too many books to be able to do that. I usually just write mini-reviews and…
I woke up screaming. Or at least, I was told I was screaming. I only remember crying. I was on a gurney in the post-op recovery area (PACU) after having an exploratory laparoscopy to determine the source of my persistent pelvic pain. I’d had knee surgery the year prior and recalled that waking up…
What do I know about endometriosis? I know my symptoms started when I was a teenager, about two years after beginning menses. I know when, as a 19-year old, I brought my symptoms and concern for endometriosis to my attention of my OB/GYN, she dismissed my concerns because I didn’t have “enough” symptoms; since…
