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Embody Empathy This Pain Awareness Month
Do you embody empathy when you cross paths with others? The homeless person in the subway station carrying a backpack and all of his worldly possessions in a shopping cart. The mother with a screaming kid in the grocery store. The woman who parked in the handicapped space, but walked into the store unassisted. We’ve…
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Photo Friday – Pain Week 2017
Pain Week is an annual conference focused on pain for the health care professionals who see patients who have a multitude of disorders and diseases. Doctors, pharmacologists, nurse practitioners, and those who offer complementary and alternative therapies all gather to attend seminars on the latest research in this field. I was there to represent US…
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How to “Describe Your Typical Day” When You Have a Disability
It’s always scary to get an envelope in the mail from the Social Security Disability office. Recently, one of those showed up in my mailbox. It was time to recertify my disability. It’s been three years since I was awarded benefits. The Social Security Administration has the following guidelines on when and how often someone…
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You Are the Sum of the Five People You Spend the Most Time With
“You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn I found this to be a fascinating concept. You could approach this from so many different angles. You could dissect the people you most associate with today or you could look back on your life and pick the…
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Photo Friday: Wisdom of Crowds
I took this photo in 2015 at the offices of Health Union, the parent company of Migraine.com. I was, and still am, intrigued by the artwork of the brain made up by hands. The artwork was created with chalk on a blackboard, with incredible detail and precision. The hands represent working together, which beautifully depicts…
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Why Being “Disabled” is a Full-Time Job
*************************SEEKING APPLICANTS************************* Job Title Chief Medical Officer of Personal Health Affairs (AKA Social Security Disability Beneficiary) Job Description Full-time position, flexible hours. Prerequisite: Ideal candidate would have a background in all of the following areas: analytics, accounting, patient advocacy, medical billing, insurance underwriting, legalese, pharmacology, healthcare administration, Social Security Disability, Medicare & Medicaid. Preference for…
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How Do YOU #MoveAgainstMigraine?
How do YOU #MoveAgainstMigraine? Yoga is my way to #MoveAgainstMigraine. It took me years to build up the stamina to be able to go back to a practice I had started years before becoming chronic. Yoga has helped me connect to my body and learn how to listen to what it is trying to tell…
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Photo Friday – Past 5 Weeks of Travel
Today, I’m getting on a plane from DC back to LA. The past 5 weeks have been filled with conferences, interviews, writing, education, planning, advocacy and lots of travel. I had a friend ask me how I travel so much with such debilitating chronic migraine? My response was: If there’s something really important to me,…
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Migraine Takes. But It Also Gives Sometimes.
My eyes were full of tears so many times in June for different reasons. Sometimes because of my own pain, but more often due to the stories of others that I have had the privileged to know. I’ve seen the despair of a life with migraine disease, robbing those of the future they had envisioned.…
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The INvisible Project – Migraine Edition
You may have seen me post about the Invisible Project, but I don’t think I’ve taken the time to explain it. It’s a magazine that highlights the lives of those LIVING with chronic pain and tells their stories, emphasizing pictures from their personal archives. The main purpose is to make the invisible more visible. The…
Katie is a professional patient, writer for Migraine.com, US Pain Ambassador, patient advocate, speaker, and freelance writer.