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

by Ilana Jacqueline

Overview

“An important antidote to the dogmatic ‘kale and vitamins’ tone of most ‘self-help’ literature.”
—Alexa Tsoulis-Reay, senior writer, New York magazine

Popular blogger Ilana Jacqueline offers smart and savvy advice, humor, 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 an invisible chronic illness, 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 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 judg-y 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781626255999
Publisher:	New Harbinger Publications
Publication date:	03/01/2018
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Ilana Jacqueline is author of the award-winning blog Let’s Feel Better. She started the blog at age twenty-two 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 a health journalist and professional patient advocate whose work has included writing for publications like Cosmopolitan and The Huffington Post on the patient experience, as well as working for health care companies and patient advocacy groups as a consultant and advisor. She has a personal connection with the patient community, as she has been a patient with complex chronic illnesses throughout her life, including immune deficiency, dysautonomia, gastroparesis, and an adhesion disorder.

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 is currently working on multiple projects to help connect chronically ill patients with remote employment opportunities, financial and emotional support, as well as creating new programs for patient empowerment and awareness efforts. Jacqueline lives with her biochemist husband and literally the cutest apricot poodle you’ve ever seen in Boca Raton, FL.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1
1. Accepting Your Life with Chronic Illness 11
2. Self-Compassion
and Rising Above Self-Defeating Thoughts 21
3. What They’re Going to Say About You 35
4. Making New Friendships and Salvaging Old Ones 55
5. Dating and Relationships 69
6. Creating a Support System 83
7. The World Won’t Wait: School and Work 97
8. Remaining Independent 123
9. Becoming Your Own Patient Advocate 135
10. Thriving with Chronic Illness 159
Acknowledgments 167
Appendix: Online Resources 169
References 195

Interviews

Jacqueline resides in Boca Raton, FL.

Editorial 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