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A place for couples dealing with illness to find resources and advice, hear stories, and discover support. Whether the illness is chronic or acute, the result of disease or accident, couples can learn strategies for coping with the changes illness brings into our relationships and our worlds. The information provided in this blog is for educational and support purposes only. It should not be used as a substitute for seeking professional care.
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About Me
- Barbara Kivowitz
- United States
- In November, 1999 I was whacked with a mysterious chronic pain syndrome that took me out of my life. With the help of my husband, my dog, and a combination of western and alternative approaches, I have a new life that includes working, writing, mountain climbing, smiling, and managing pain. I learned a lot along the way, especially about illness and the couple relationship. I'm also a psychotherapist, a business consultant, and have written a book about couples and illness, which will be re-released 6/12/18: Love in the Time of Chronic Illness - How to Fight the Sickness, Not Each Other
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Useful Web Sites
Blogs I Read
- A Chronic Dose
- A Patient Perspective
- Being Chronically Ill is a Pill
- Better Health
- But You Don't Look Sick
- CRPS-RSD A Better Life
- Chronic Babe
- Chronic Marriage
- Counting My Spoons
- Dave Debronkart
- Digital Doorway
- Dr. Deb
- Duncan Cross
- Everyone Needs Therapy
- Everything Health
- Fighting Fatigue
- Getting Closer to Myself
- Green Words Growing
- Healblog
- How to Cope with Pain
- Long Term Care
- Merely Me's Writing to Survive
- Musings of a Cranky Caregiver
- Other Things Amanzi
- Own Your Health
- Permission to Heal
- Running a Hospital
- ScienceRoll
- Sick Momma
- The Sassy Lime
- The Wife of a Schizophrenic
- Wellspouse
- Wheelchair Lady
“Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag
1 comment:
Fifty years ago I met the girl I knew I would never have ..
Three years ago, after our failed marriages, we met online through a high school reunion website.
A year later, I drove cross-country from Ohio to San Diego, our home town, and I fell in love with this lovely woman, with the same loving heart that she had as a young girl.
A year after we reunited, she became ill with MDS, a blood cancer with no known cure.
I have made an ass of myself wanting a closer relationship, pushing marriage, and being in denial about the reality of her cancer, and how it has affected her desires, hopes, dreams...her life.
She has patiently endured my immature attempts to get her to be more outgoing and open in our relationship, not fully understanding her fragility....
Her love and patient wisdom has strengthened us both, and we are happy huggers, still loving that wonderful and romantic kiss...
She faces stemcell transplant in a few months now. ..and we are able to share fears, hopes, mistakes, and live, with forgiveness and trust as the foundation of our love.
From this tragedy, a real bond of high value has been born.
Our words are simpler, fewer, and of greater value than before.
Are things are possible, with love.
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