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... Read More Read More The post Spinal CSF Leak: Parenting While Leaking appeared first on RibbonRx ..read more

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... Read More Read More The post Spinal CSF Leak: The True Impact on a Life appeared first on RibbonRx ..read more

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 in the eyes of my doctors, I needed this patch to work to prove I had a leak. CW: Blood, needles, detailed description of medical procedure... Read More Read More The post Spinal CSF Leak: The First Blood Patch appeared first on ribbonrx ..read more

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 do was to assemble the play kitchen we got for Bean. I hauled all the large and moderately heavy pieces upstairs and through a baby gate.... Read More Read More The post Spinal CSF Leak: How It Started appeared first on ribbonrx ..read more

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. It is a form of psychological abuse that occurs when someone manipulates and sows seeds of doubt in another’s mind. This causes the victim to doubt... Read More Read More The post Medical Gaslighting: It Happened to Me appeared first on ..read more

2019 was a tough year. Anticipation. Shock. Fear. Worry. Surprise. Love. Anxiety. Relief. Doubt. Amazement. Pride. But I guess 2019 ended up being a pretty good year. Introducing “Bean” Our daughter “Bean” was born on June 12, 2019. Nothing about motherhood is easy. It’s hard. It’s really hard. Chronic illness makes it harder than hard. In fact, I’d be blatantly lying if I didn’t say motherhood just really sucks sometimes. And I suck at it. But my husband is amazing.... Read More Read More The post 2019: Becoming a Mama appeared first on ribbonrx ..read more

It’s been ages since I’ve written anything on the blog. Six months, to be exact. Life has undergone some fairly significant changes since then. And that story begins back on my birthday. The weather on my birthday is usually cloudy, cool, and dreary. Such is normal for the end of October, and this year, my 33rd, was no exception. We’d had some new friends visiting from out of state/country for several days prior. They headed off that morning for the... Read More Read More The post The Birthday Surprise of a Lifetime appeared first on ribbonrx ..read more

I’d like to take this opportunity to discuss something important to me. An assumption, more along the lines of an uneducated opinion, has turned into a war of sorts that is tearing apart my country right now. That something being: not all people who use opioids are drug addicts. The problem with those who doesn’t understand this fairly easy concept comes down to observation bias. Those who label anyone who uses an opioid for any reason as a drug addict are refusing... Read More Read More The post I Use Opioids and I’m Not An Addict appeared first on ribbonrx ..read more

“Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” ~1 Thessalonians 5:18 I had a gratitude journal back during my second year of college. Looking back on it now, I realize how important it was in helping me maintain a valuable perspective on life during what was a very trying year. Plus, it’s sometimes hilarious re-reading it and trying to remember the events I was referring to. It doesn’t matter how big or small... Read More Read More The post Weekly Gratitudes: September 17, 2018 appeared first on ribbonrx ..read more

If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, it should be fairly obvious that I have a painful condition called endometriosis. One of the primary symptoms of endometriosis is chronic pelvic pain. A Bit About Endometriosis Many times the pain from endometriosis is most intense around the time of a woman’s period, as the endometriosis lesions respond to normal female hormones and break down and bleed. Some women experience pain all the time, including during or after... Read More Read More The post Chronic Pelvic Pain: So What Do I Do Now? appeared first on ribbonrx ..read more