Leah Holstein, Author at Spoon Shares

February 2, 2016

Self Diagnosis: Sometimes Your Google Search is Better Than Their Medical Degree

If you’re a person like me who spends an inordinate amount of time on the internet, then you’ve seen some variation of this mug floating around social media:

I have a lot of friends and family in the medical field, so I see this a lot. I understand where it comes from; there is a lot of false information out there that will mislead people into believing things that are categorically false (cough-anti-vaxxers-cough), and that can be frustrating for the people who spent a lot of time, money, and migraines learning the facts.

But, unfortunately, this kind of meme is also reductive to a resource that genuinely helps a lot of people with illness, chronic or otherwise. Because a google search can truly be a sick person’s best resource.

Because, quite often, our google searches find the answers faster than the people with medical degrees. [Read more…]

January 3, 2016

A Message to All Spoonies: You Can Still Have A Wonderful Life

Twas two days before Christmas, and all through my tummy, not an intestine was digesting, not even a crumb-y. My feeding bags hung on the IV pole with care, in hopes that nutrition soon would be there. With my dogs and I laying a-snug in my bed, and Muppet Christmas carols playing through earbuds in my head, knitting a last-minute Christmas day gift, I smile, content, and my spirits do lift.

Okay, I’m not a poet, and I certainly know it. So here’s a picture of my adorable dogs to make up for it.

But there is a point to my sappy spoonie story-time, and that is a message I want everyone with chronic illness to realize, that I have slowly realized in my past four years with chronic illness. [Read more…]

November 23, 2015

Fighting Nausea with Ginger Products!

Well, it turns out that Cartman was wrong. There is nothing wrong with being ginger.

I have been totally ging-ified for several years now, because, it turns out, ginger is one of my most effective medicines.

Since I have gastroparesis, one of my biggest and most debilitating symptoms is chronic nausea. And I do many different things to try and manage it (look to a future post for that one), but my absolute favorite is ginger.

Ginger. Ginger. Ginger. And more ginger.

Now, if you’re like “Oh, I’ve tried ginger ale and it doesn’t do much.” Well, odds are, you’re drinking the average mass marketed ginger ale, like Schwepps or Gosling, which means you’re actually not getting real ginger ale. You’re getting carbonated sugar water with artificial ginger taste. And sometimes carbonated sugar water can help, because of the bubbles, but you’re not getting the benefit of ginger.

Ginger is kind of a miracle plant. It has a lot of healing properties and, most importantly for spoonies with nausea, it aids digestion and soothes the stomach. So when you’re looking for something to really help your tummy aches, you want some real, honest-to-goodness ginger. And the best part is that, unlike most medicines, there are really no bad side effects to consuming ginger.

So now the question is, how do I get this ginger into my body? Well, after many years of trying just about every ginger product available in the continental U.S., I am here to share my favorite products! [Read more…]

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