The Art of Illness, Illness & Art Blog, Chatroom, Store & Podcast My new venture with this business, the art of candle making. I’ve started to make several different candles with yummy fragrances. Clicking on this image will bring you to the archive page with all blog posts. We are making some real headway. It feels slow, but steady. The weather in the Northeast has not been particularly summer-like with an incredible, large amount of rain. I’ve never, in my 45 years of life, seen a spring and early summer so wet. It has though, helped me to stay in and take care of some things. I’ve h ..read more

The Art of Illness, Illness & Art Blog, Chatroom, Store & Podcast It’s been a bit since I have made a blog post! It’s been almost exactly a month actually. I was on a roll and had been posting about once a week, but things got a bit hectic. Between trying to get parts and materials for the commercial kitchen, planting and maintaining several vegetable gardens, work, being a mother and wife and of course the overwhelming medical problems, it’s been busy. That’s where the “unstable” in the title comes in. At least I added a pretty picture of a part of one of our perennial gardens before ..read more

That’s quite a combination, yes? I suppose you don’t often see hobbies and anger in the same place, but I have a lot of hobbies, I’m angry and I have an update. This was my second alcohol ink piece I ever created. I will start with the ever annoying update to the drama of my medical madness. Madness because it makes me mad–as in angry AND as in crazy. It hasn’t taken long at all to catch the overall mood I’m experiencing while writing this. I’ve had it. Clearly. I could really use a sabbatical. I will get into that more later, but for now I will follow up where I left off in my last blog post ..read more

This is a busy time of year, it’s spring. We do A LOT of planting. Not hollering, just excited! All of the winter prep starts to unfold and I start planting seedlings. We try to be as self-sufficient as possible and we continue to work more and more in that direction every year. I started onions in February and I just started 4 types of peppers this past weekend. I planted Rewia sweet peppers, Black Hungarian hot peppers, Anaheims, and Jalapeno’s. I will be planting so very much more in the coming weeks. All of that will be added to my future blog posts. I will be using some of the food in my ..read more

We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post. It may help offset the cost of running this blog As promised, I’m going to dedicate this blog post to the cardiac event I mentioned in my last post. So back to the ER visit and where I left off at the initial EKG. My EKG (ECG, whichever you are used to hearing) showed a “first-degree AV block, and ST changes concerning for an inferior MI including greater than 2 mm of ST elevation in leads II, III, and aVF as well as minimal depressions in the lateral leads V4, V5, V6.” Also described as “Initial ECG is concerning for acu ..read more

We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post. It may help offset the cost of running this blog I left off my last blog post with a piece of my art. My talented husband makes the trim for many of my pieces. I do welcome you to share this blog, my Facebook page, Instagram, and pin to Pinterest. I do hope to inspire others, share my story, connect with people, and see the work of other people as well as hear their stories. In May of 2021 I had a right arthroscopic shoulder surgery where they took off the end of my clavicle, cleaned out the bone spurs, shaved up the lab ..read more

Today I want to give a bit of an update and then plunge into the topic of – pretending to feel well. I left off in my previous post heading into another week with appointments. I had a regular rheumatology appointment for the Lupus and Psoriatic Arthritis. I then had to travel back down to the larger specialist system again the next day for an echocardiogram. The rheumatology appointment went well, except for breaking down and crying. I hadn’t completely processed all that I was going through with the heart stuff. When he checked in on that, I started to cry when I described what had happened ..read more

Wow! Let’s just say that I am really glad that I have a commissioned piece going right now to help combat some of the stress I’m experiencing. Throwing all the love into it. It will be done really soon though and will be going to live with it’s new (hopefully happy) owner. I think things are going to be very busy between appointments and seedlings/planting, work, family, and of course getting the commercial kitchen running. I’m trying to stay focused, but I have to say, times are quite hard! The commercial kitchen is coming along. It’s about to get electricity soon!!! I know I know, draw you ..read more

We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post. It may help offset the cost of running this blog Welcome back to “What the Hell is Happening to Me”. So I’m sent back to the rheumatologist that I originally saw that dismissed me and basically said I had fibromyalgia when I knew this couldn’t be. He reevaluated me and said that he believed it was psoriatic arthritis since I also have psoriasis. He gave me some treatment options and recommendations. I chose to do Remicade infusions. Now, I hate (strong word, I know) taking meds and I always try every possible natural trea ..read more

As promised in my previous post, I will be touching on the topic of toxic positivity. Before I do though, I’m going to update this blog about the three specialist appointments I had this week, as I also discussed in the previous post. Where to begin? I guess in chronological order would make the most sense. I went back to the cardiologist office because I had been having trouble with the medication for the coronary artery vasospasms and was also having some tachycardia. They had wanted me to log my blood pressure and heart rate for two weeks on this new medication and do an EKG (ECG) in the of ..read more