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Welcome to January’s Pain-Blog Carnival…  the best pain articles of the month, gathered for you.

It’s January, an annual time to make (and, hopefully, keep) resolutions, and to review our lives.

• Change – The Words We Use, with 10 great ways to weave habits into our lives.
• 6 Tools for Making Sensible Resolutions - smart choices might be better than the pressure of resolutions hanging over our heads.
• Getting Down With What Gets in Your Way, 3 resources to get past whatever prevents you from meeting your goals.
• The Measure of a Choice, looks at what happens when life doesn’t conform to our plans.  Are we capable of more than we thought?

For all of us, some days are better than others.  One of Those Days asks if you can keep up the “good fight” today.

This month, The New York Times ran a controversial story about Lyrica, a new medication for Fibromyalgia.  The uproar came not from info about the medication, but from The Time’s poor decision to question if FM was a “real” disease.

• Letters responding to their story
• A response from CRPS-RSD A Better Life

Rounding out this month:

• An Experience of Surgery, from Afflicted with RSD/CRPS.
• What, No Propofol?  What will happen is this gold-standard anesthetic isn’t covered by insurance?  I hope this gets resolved, before I need surgery!
• The Dangers of Vitamin D Deficiency.  Is it really chronic pain, fibromyalgia, or inflammatory bowel disease, or instead, simply a low level of this needed vitamin?
• PAIN Exhibit: The Art of Chronic Pain, which increases awareness of misunderstood chronic pain, by giving its sufferers a voice.

Thanks to Aloalosabine for the photo!

Thanks to everyone for their submissions!
February’s Pain-Blog Carnival
Wed, Feb 27
Deadline for submissions:  Wed, Feb 20
Send in your submissions here.
Theme:  Valentine’s Day and Pain, articles related to pain conditions and love, partners, family, etc.

 For even more great medical reading, this week’s Grand Rounds is hosted at Emergiblog.