It's the first week of Pride month so I'm talking about families of choice. When I came out it was not welcome. While my folks are fairly liberal and who, in the early 70's adopted kids of color and fought against racism (even in their own families). However, they weren't similarly prepared to accept me as queer. Especially for my mom: the church and the south led her to believe that my love was inferior, was wrong, and separated me from the love of God. That meant that I started...

Today I'm wrapping up my series about alternative medical therapies. I thought I'd take a moment to address what I didn't in last week's episode -- the fact that if you're watching this on video my look has changed dramatically. I'm now bald. If you search alternative medical treatments on Wikipedia there are dozens if not a couple of hundred treatments listed. I won't get to all of those. I think most all of us with chronic conditions are met with others' opinions about what will...

Energy medicine is likely one of the oldest forms of medicine. This might include reiki, body talk, EFT, medical intuit or other names. Whether we call it qi, chi, prana, or atomic energy, or life force, there is energy running through us and that energy can be influenced and manipulated. Energy practitioners influence or direct the energy within my body to generate greater comfort or healing. Through things like muscle testing, or indicators in my pulse or reading my energy in other...

I'm talking today about a therapy that is rather woo. It is called Earthing. With more than 30 years of medical studies performed on it, I was surprised that I didn't learn of it until very recently. Simply put, it is the practice of putting your bare skin on the earth. The idea came from the fact that we walked the earth for millennia without shoes. In our modern world we're receiving all kinds of wave particles both natural and artificial. Artificial waves like wifi, cell, and...

As I continue to discuss alternative methods of healing today I'm talking about sound therapy or sound healing. Maybe you know about Tibetan singing bowls or have heard about taking a sound bath. When we talk about sound healing, that is a broad term that implies using the modality of sound for various types of intended purposes. I have experienced sound healings on the floor on a mat, I've been on massage-type table, and I've experienced two "floating" sound baths one in the silks...

Often those of us with chronic pain or illness decide to try modalities other than Western medicine. From diagnosis to treatment to long term care, there are a wide array of options to get input from experts who aren't our typical physicians. Today I'm talking about acupuncture. Acupuncture is a practice of traditional Chinese medicine. By using the meridians that our qi follows and reading our pulse, a practitioner can impact our pain, energy, and internal organs with needles. Typically...

This is an FDA approved device that I've been using for about a year and a half. My migraines are daily. I use the Ceafaly daily both as a prevention and as a treatment for acute migraines. There are 2 settings - one 20 minutes long for migraine prevention and one that's 1 hour long to interrupt migraines. You can buy the device at Cefaly.com. It retails for about $350. It has worked for me. It does reduce the intensity of migraines. The device stimulates the vegus nerve. The...

I have a good friend who was tested for POTS. POTS can cause changes in heartrate, blood pressure, and vertigo, all due to autonomic nervous system dysregulation. Her doctor booked her in for testing (which I didn't know they had available). Within a day of the testing, she learned she didn't test positive for POTS. This is someone with other complex chronic pain and illnesses. The lack of that diagnosis still hit her hard. I could relate to that fragility and the invalidation that...

Evusheld is the FDA approved, lab created, preventative monoclonal antibody therapy. In addition to the lab-created variety of monoclonal antibodies (Evusheld), there are biologically derived monoclonal antibodies which are spun from the blood from people who are sick with COVID and administered to those who are sick with COVID to help speed their recovery. Evusheld is a protein that is designed to look like the proteins we make when we get sick. When injected, it makes a body like mine...

Music has been a life-long love affair. Being raised in the church, we always had magnificent choral directors and from the time I could talk I sang in choirs. Music is a through-line for most of my life. When I had pocket money I was buying records and tapes and I studied opera in college. When I got sick and my lungs started to fail I quit music all together. Music was off the table for a few reasons: 1) when I don't have enough oxygen to talk, I don't have enough to sing, 2)...

Living with chronic pain and illness, make birthdays or the marking of time is fraught. Sometimes I haven't wanted to be alive another minute, another day and other times I'm really grateful to still be here. There other times I've been very close to death. I have a terminal illness and have been told I would die. I've thought a lot about my own death and dying. I am in some ways reconciled to my own death and am less afraid of my death than of prolonged/worsening suffering. While I'm...

Last week, March 28th was Rare Disease Day. I have a rare disease called Antisynthetase Syndrome. It is diagnosed at about 1 in 100,000 people and affects more women than men. It is an immune-mediated disease that causes inflammation. It can effect a number of systems in the body. Most patients experience one of the inflammatory myopathies (muscle-wasting disease), polyarthritis, mechanic's hands (which is MUCH worse than it sounds), Renaud's syndrome, and interstitial lung disease. I...

Those of us with compromised immune systems are prone to thrush. In video 373 I talk more about how we contract thrush and what it is. In this video I'm talking about what I do once I have thrush. Anything that is sugar or immediately converts to sugar will increase my experience of pain and how raw my mouth is. Things like rice, cracker, potatoes, bread, and other simple starches don't work. I am a meat eater and I would find it difficult to eat an all vegetarian or vegan diet while...

Thrush -- what is it? Who gets it? What's it all about? May you never have to experience it. Thrush impacts people with compromised immune systems: people on chemotherapy, babies, the elderly. Thrush is an overgrowth of candida: yeast. It is a yeast infection of the mouth. This yeast is present all the time in our mouth, intestine, on our skin. However, when it is out of balance it can cause thrush. Antibiotics can cause this. For me, my first symptom is a film or coating on my...

I'm Annette Leonard, speaker, coach, and sick person who believes that my illnesses do not define me. If health is the absence of disease and wellness is the presence of wholeness, then no matter what your disease status, we can work toward your wellness, your wholeness. Whether or not you are ever "healthy" on paper, you can be well. Join me and others on the path back to wholeness at AnnetteLeonard.com. Whether you are a person experiencing chronic illness or are someone who loves or...

I've been out for three weeks because of pneumonia. It took antibiotics and a course of prednisone to resolve things. Whether it's the plans that get disrupted, or these broadcasts, there are big set backs. I found myself in the kitchen winded from trying to grate cheese. When I'm once again in a cycle of thrush from the antibiotics and unable to get out of this illness-begets-illness cycle it starts to feel like an ouroboros. The snake that eats its tail. It's a self-perpetuating,...

I'm feeling crummy, on top of crummy. I think I have pneumonia. Also, I'm going through a depression. In my life depression has been cyclical. It comes around every 3-5 years. One thing that's difficult is that I deceive myself each time thinking that I've somehow "licked" depression. So when it comes back, it is accompanied by a sense of failure. Living with pain and illness, my mind is a place of refuge. So to have it be a place of difficulty and anguish makes the days longer and...

I'm planning the year ahead. Soon I'll be giving you details about conversations I'll be hosting on IG Live. If there are things you want me to discuss or guests you'd like to hear from, please let me know. Today, I'm giving you a product review. Every morning I start my day with this hand cream. Because of my autoimmune diseases I have polyarthritis. When I haven't moved, when I'm cold, or when I'm inflamed, my joints hurt the worst. This cream is good for rheumatoid, poly, or...

I'm Annette Leonard, speaker, coach, and sick person who believes that my illnesses do not define me. If health is the absence of disease and wellness is the presence of wholeness, then no matter what your disease status, we can work toward your wellness, your wholeness. Whether or not you are ever "healthy" on paper, you can be well. Join me and others on the path back to wholeness at AnnetteLeonard.com. Whether you are a person experiencing chronic illness or are someone who loves or...

The holidays are upon us. Here in the US, that means lots of rampant commercialism. I often get sucked into that -- trying to backfill the holes in my heart with shopping (which never works.) But that isn't the subject of this video. Even for the healthiest among us, holidays aren't what they're cracked up to be. For most, the holidays include baggage; more so for those of us with chronic pain and illness. This is up for me again. Last week week was my most cherished holiday event. I...

It's getting dark here very early. I'm noticing that it effects me. More than just the darkness, I'm feeling heaviness. If you've been here you know that I took time off that was unplanned. I'm struggling. This is the unwelcome but unfamiliar experience: depression. Me and depression go way back. If I'm honest, I always hope I've seen the last of depression. Because of that, I feel a sense of failure. I can acknowledge that it isn't "failure." However, my mind still plays this trick...

While Thanksgiving and it's roots are admittedly problematic, this holiday is one of my favorites. The focus on food, friends, family, and giving thanks, are the reasons it is my favorite. I have so much to be thankful for even in the midst of pain and illness. Chief among my gratitude: this year I got pneumonia and COVID. Having such serious lung disease (in addition to other complex medical problems), none of my doctors would have predicted that I would still be here after such serious...

I recently traveled to Seattle to visit my specialists. I saw my lung docs as well as a rheumatology specialist. Antisynthetase syndrome is rare enough that my local rheumatologist treats only me with the disease. There I learned a lot about Ig. For many of us IVIg and SCIg is a live-giving therapy. It has changed the course of my illnesses even though I have an adverse reaction to it. Those of us with autoimmune diseases are fighting our own bodies, in order to control that,...

I'm continuing to talk about my experience with COVID. I have something like 6 autoimmune disease from Sjogren's to Polymyositis. The most threatening with COVID is having Pulmonary Fibrosis (related to antisynthetase syndrome). This lung disease means that my lungs are progressively turning themselves into scar tissue. Contracting COVID was scary. Therefore, it is miraculous that I came through it. On about the 2nd day, having been in contact with my doctors, I got on antivirals. ...

If you can avoid getting COVID, do. Here's a bit about what happened when I got COVID. Because of my lung disease I can't breathe through a N95 or KN5 mask. But, while wearing a cloth and surgical mask, I caught COVID from my sister-in-law. I'd just had treatment (Rituxan/chemo) about 10 days prior so my immune system was fully suppressed to keep me from fighting myself. We'd been having fires in the area so I thought perhaps my scratchy throat was due to the poor air quality. Then I got...