Happy Spring!  Welcome to the March Pain-Blog Carnival, some of this month’s great writing related to pain from other blogs and websites.  I hope you enjoy the selections! Several new blogs to share… Well Book is a friendly community where you can get support, advice, and motivation.  As well, you can use their health tracking tools.  Thanks to Vladimir [...]

Each Monday this series of articles will feature pain management techniques to help you decrease and cope with pain.  It’s your at-home pain management class! Last week we looked at guided imagery which helps reduce pain through suggestion and images.  An image is paired with your pain, and by decreasing or changing the image in some way, your pain [...]

Hospitals aren’t the best place to relax and enjoy life, right? A program called The Comfort Cart can make your stay better.  First introduced at Quincy Medical Center outside of Boston by their Pain Management Task Force, a comfort cart has items which can bring “comfort and inspiration” to patients. What’s on the cart? music and nature [...]

Having chronic pain is a challenge for most of us, right?  Did you know that it’s more likely that you’ll experience growth rather than a psychiatric disorder? That’s good news! Research is beginning to show that after significant trauma, more people report it as a growth experience than say that they’ve developed depression, anxiety or [...]

Each Monday this series of articles will feature pain management techniques to help you decrease and cope with pain.  It’s your at-home pain management class! So far we’ve looked at relaxation skills – breathing, relaxation and visualization – that work to decrease pain indirectly through relaxation.  Guided imagery – while still a relaxation skill – is a bit different. [...]

Do you complain about your pain or suffer in silence? I’m reading Extra Innings, a memoir about the writer Doris Grumbach’s 73rd year of life.  At times depressed, she wonders: Why do old people so often hide their deepest despair?  Is it unpopular, unsociable perhaps, to confess that one hates being old?  The more acceptable stance is [...]

I play tennis, but I’m no Rafa Nadal! I cook spaghetti, but I’m no Gordon Ramsay! And while I write about pain, I’m no Andrew Levy, author of A Brain Wider than the Sky, a memoir of his 20+ years of experiences with migraines. It is a spellbinding, creative work.  His power as a writer lets even those of us without migraines [...]

Each Monday this series of articles will feature pain management techniques to help you decrease and cope with pain.  It’s your at-home pain management class! How are you doing with your new habit?  If you’re trying to practice pain managements skills regularly, how are you doing with that? Let’s take a break from pain today, and I’ll [...]

It’s a significant challenge to deal with a lasting illness.  You might not feel well, some or even most of the time.  There’s uncertainty about treatments and the prognosis.  You might not be able to participate in the activities you once enjoyed. Yet sometimes the hardest part of chronic illness is its effect on your [...]

This is a submission from Rosemary from our December contests. Let me start this with some background on myself.  I have RSD (a neurological disease with severe pain  ~HtCwP) in my lower left leg and foot, and in my right foot.  I was diagnosed in March 2009 – after a couple of months of docs [...]