Surviving and Thriving with an Invisible Chronic Illness: How to Stay Sane and Live One Step Ahead of Your Symptoms

(Paperback)

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Popular blogger Ilana Jacqueline writes poignantly about living with two debilitating autoimmune diseases and presents advice and practical tips for living with an invisible chronic illness. Do you live with a chronic, debilitating, yet invisible condition You may feel isolated, out of step, judged, lonely, or misunderstood-and that's on top of dealing with the symptoms of your actual illness. Take heart. You are not alone, although sometimes it can feel that way. Written by a blogger who suffers from two autoimmune diseases, Surviving and Thriving with an Invisible Chronic Illness offers peer-to-peer support to help you stay sane, be your own advocate, and get back to living your life. This smart, compelling guide is written for anyone suffering with an illness no one can see-such as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), Lyme disease, lupus, dysautonomia, or even multiple sclerosis (MP). This book will tell you everything you need to know about living with a complicated, invisible condition-from how to balance sex, dating, and relationships to handling work and school with unavoidable absences. You'll also learn to navigate judgy or skeptical relatives and strangers and-most importantly-manage your medical care. Suffering from a chronic illness doesn't mean you can't live an active, engaged life. This book will show you how.

Reviews

"An intimate, humorous, and defiantly real guide to living with chronic illness. Jacqueline ushers the reader with intimate and humorous examples drawn from her everyday life--from passing out in parking lots, to the practicalities of dating and managing relationships, to the pain and frustration of relapse and pill diets while reminding the reader at every turn: Never let your illness define you. An important antidote to the dogmatic 'kale and vitamins' tone of most 'self-help' literature."
--Alexa Tsoulis-Reay, senior writer, New York magazine--Alexa Tsoulis-Reay
"Just as in her blog, Ilana Jacqueline continues to educate chronically ill patients with a sharp wit, insightful information, and, most of all, hope. I would buy this for anyone going through life's journey with the extra burden of ill health to give them effective tools and stories that will support them, and of course, a few good belly laughs."
--Carri Levy, creator of the Behind the Mystery series for Lifetime TV--Carri Levy

Author Bio

Ilana Jacqueline is author of the award-winning blog, Let's Feel Better. She started the blog at age 22 to share her humbling, hilarious, and heartfelt experiences coping with chronic illness. From full contact fights with skull-cramping migraines to making peace with being a human pincushion, she writes boldly and unabashedly about breaking down, getting back up, and pulling off the bandage that is "coming out" about the shame and frustration of living with chronic illness.

Jacqueline is managing editor of The RARE Daily for the international rare and genetic disease nonprofit, Global Genes. She also freelances for pop culture magazines and websites including Cosmopolitan.com and is a columnist for the patient-centered immunodeficiency magazine, IG Living. Her work has been published in the Sun Sentinel, the Happy Herald, The Boca Raton Observer, The Palm Beach Post, Today's Teen Magazine, Today's Teen Online, Materniteens, Lemondrop, xoVain, and xoJane. She lives with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a form of dysautonomia, and primary immune deficiency disease.

As a health advocate and regularly interviewed expert on chronic illness, Jacqueline looks to help patients advocate for themselves at their most vulnerable moments. She recently created a nonprofit organization called Chronic Connect, to help patients who have ongoing disease with support, career guidance, and financial planning. Chronic Connect also creates care packages for patients and caregivers going through difficult periods. You can learn more at www.chronicconnect.org.

Jacqueline lives with her biochemist fianc and literally the cutest apricot poodle you've ever seen in Boca Raton, FL.