Christie Cox

Part One of Two: When medical dismissal teaches us to research harder, search longer, question reassurance, and never quite know when it is safe to stop looking for answers

Attention Swifties! Apparently the car concert now needs a designated DJ

Viktor Frankl, EDS identity creep, and the one freedom chronic illness doesn’t get to steal.

What Twenty One Pilots taught me about mental health, being understood, and the things we’re finally allowed to say.

NEW: Seen & Soothed! Trauma, ACEs, the nervous system, and the survival patterns our bodies may still be carrying long after the danger has passed

The ridiculously practical EDS therapy that can help you shower, cook, think, work, stand, conserve energy, protect your joints and generally make life require fewer gymnastics

Rise in cash-pay and concierge medicine, when buying more medical attention might help a complex chronic illness patient while understanding health basics are now $ upgrades. Worth subscribing for!

(Yes, P-U-P-U — Not P-O-O, Though Chronic Pain Is Some Shit)

The strange chase: seeking answers, being offered surgery, and wondering when it’s time to stop chasing your body and start living in it + the questions to ask yourself.

Learn your condition. Know your medications. Read your reports. Speak up. Ask questions. But please don’t appear to know too much, feel too much, ask too much, or arrive suspiciously prepared.

Sometimes you spend years trying to find the expert who finally understands your complicated body. Then the expert says, “Yes, I see it. Let’s operate.” Wait. That wasn’t necessarily what I meant.

The cruel irony of chronic illness: learning to teach healthcare how to care for your body, while trying not to lose the person living inside it. How I went up a mountain and met myself.

Advocate for yourself. Trust your body. Don’t take no for an answer. But at some point, please stop making your medical chart a full-time investigative podcast. Uh, me?

Support your unstable joints. Build stronger muscles. Use the tools that help you function. But apparently not too much, lest your body discover outsourcing and never work again.

15 things people living with chronic pain understand without explanation as we just “get it”

For World Mindfulness Day, a reminder that you do not have to become a serene woodland creature to benefit from five quiet minutes.

Listen to your body. Rest when you need to. Keep moving. Build strength. Don’t push through symptoms. And for heaven’s sake, don’t get deconditioned. Glad we cleared that up.

Wonky ironies. Do this. Don’t do that. Definitely do both. Welcome to chronic illness. And whatever you do, please don’t make yourself sicker trying to get healthier.

The science, the hype, and whether your connective tissue will thank you… or file a complaint.

You know it, but do you know how to prevent it, even stop it mid-happening and when to walk out?