This site comes recommended by a friend of the blog, and oh boy does it look useful! Since it’s meant for use by doctors as well, the information it will give you doesn’t go through the kinds of “for the patient” filters you’d see on sites like WebMD.

The interface is clean and simple, and once you’ve gotten a list of conditions and selected one to investigate, it opens an on-the-page window for you with the Merck Manual’s entry. There’s in-depth data, a quick-view of the highlights of the condition, and there are even links out to other providers like Mayo Clinic, Medline, WebMD, Google, and more.

What’s particularly nice is that when you’re done looking at one condition, you can click “back to results” to get straight back to the list.

This one seems to do a good job of pulling up the common but quote-unquote rare diseases in the list, which certainly makes it feel a little more trustworthy.

[Image: an abstract painting of brightly red, light blue, and yellow paint drops over a blue background. On one side, the yellow border bleeds over the blue.]

Oh man, this is gonna blow everyone’s minds. Access intimacy is what we feel together as spoonies, or with a trusted friend, or with the person who says something that lets us relax into our disabled selves. It lets us bring down walls we don’t even notice we’re holding up, and extending that kind of intimacy can be such a radical, important gesture.

[Image: a bunch of burnt-down matches standing in a group, on a pink background]

This article honestly changed everything for me. It articulates a number of issues I’ve been dealing with and struggled to explain to both myself and others.

[ETA: This article felt perfect to me at first blush, but as I’ve listened to other folks’ takes on it, it seems that the author took a personal experience and tried to generalize it to our whole generation without mind to class, race, age, and more.

That being said, it still outlines several important phenomenons and can be extremely worthwhile and validating for burned-out spoonies. Have a look!]

Since it’s a long read, I’m going to try to distill it so as to make it more accessible:

There is a type of burnout unrelated to one’s work, but instead all those little tasks one has to do as an adult (”adulting”). Dealing with insurance. Registering to vote. Returning unwanted clothes. Errands, paperwork, you name it. You can be highly motivated and enjoy your work, but when it comes to your to do list, you get this awful paralysis you can’t shake.

We aren’t being lazy when we are paralyzed by tasks on our to do list; there are very specific reasons we’re reacting this way---namely, burnout.

We are trying to “win” the system, even though the system is unwinnable. This, of course, is a bit of a bait-and-switch, since we were told that if we studied hard and went to college we’d be able to have stable careers and a comfortable life with a home, family, 401k, etc.

A lot of us optimize our time and productivity to extremes (which, of course, would be on top of the optimizing spoonies have to do to keep afloat with limited spoons). We believe that if we just optimize right, we’ll finally be able to reach our goals and escape this hell.

Self care is often offered as a way to relieve the burnout, but it tends to just encourage this self-optimization. It’s also a hugely profitable industry.

Many of us are working through and past the burnout because we have to, and that increases our value to corporations, who continue to encourage the same old behaviors and sell us more “self care” strategies.

What can we do about all this? Well, not much aside from huge social change. But knowing about it and talking about it is half the battle.

Heavy stuff. But hugely important stuff.

❤️, Editor Diane

Why do I feel sick? And how do I fix it?

When you’re in pain or experiencing symptoms of your illness, you can sometimes be a little too distracted to remember what may have caused them, or what you can do to fix them.

Case in point: me, hobbling around with extreme POTS symptoms moaning “what is happening to me?”, having a ding-danged emotional breakdown for over a week until my partner gently suggests it could be one of my neck misalignments.

You know, the things I get every so often, which produce these exact same symptoms. The things I can get chiropractic treatment for.

Oops.

I learned something from that embarrassing moment, and it’s that I absolutely need a guide: a reference document I can break out when I’m confused about a symptom, to remind me what generally causes the symptom and ways I usually go about treating it.

Now I’ve got an Evernote document handy. It tells me my POTS symptoms could be from a missed medication, a misalignment, a GI issue that’s monopolizing my blood supply. And it tells me the things I always forget about that will help (aside from the obvious), like compression, electrolytes, and more.

Do yourself a favor and start this document. Fill it with what comes to mind, and then, the next time you go “D’OH!”, write that shit down!

❤️, Editor Diane

[Image: A clipboard with pain scale and other forms, with pen hovered over. Credit: Rawpixel]

Find The Right Scale For Your Symptoms Pain & Symptom Scales Masterpost

Folks, describing your symptoms can be an everloving nightmare—especially when most doctors have nothing but a 1-10 pain scale for you to rate them with.

Instead of (or in addition to!) carrying around a calculator and a thesaurus, try these scales on for size. They aren’t just numbers; they are concepts and words meant to make your experience easier to explain. We’ll also list some great additions to the scales that will help you describe your symptoms way better.

We’ll continue to update this post as more scales show up on our radar, so click here for the latest.

[Image: Illustration of a pharmacist using a computer to chat online. Content of image text is related in main post.]

Walgreens FREE 24/7 Pharmacy Chat Line

Y’all, if you have questions about your medication, about interactions, or even a general health question, Walgreens has a free online chat service you can use---customer or not.

The chat service doesn’t require a name and is fully confidential. You’ll first be connected with a pharmacy tech, and if needed you’ll be sent along to a pharmacist.

Just a little resource to have in your back pocket!

Folks, this looks like it could be an incredible resource for disabled folks like us, as well as the many other marginalizations that intersect with disability.

One of the reasons bad folks get away with treating us poorly, and illegally, is that although we can technically sue, we’re too dang broke and tired to even consider it worth our time. This app could change that---or, at the very least, get you out of a parking ticket.

So, tuck it in your pocket. And instead of wearily declining the next time someone says you oughta sue, know that you may have a good ol’ lawyerbot in your court.

It’s not available on Android, but worth borrowing someone’s iPhone to try it out!