Excuse Me For Saying It, But Lupus Sucks!

Excuse Me For Saying It, But Lupus Sucks!

May is Lupus Awareness Month! How Will You Spread Awareness? My daughter Christine has a tee shirt with the above logo emblazened on it, and I have always disliked the crudeness of that phrase. Every time she wore that shirt I would wince and tell her how I hated that expression, but she would just

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We All Have Lupus. - My Speech from The Lupus Gala Brunch

We All Have Lupus. – My Speech from The Lupus Gala Brunch

In Honor of Lupus Awareness Month. The following speech was given by Christine Miserandino - Donato at the Lupus Gala Brunch given by the Lupus Alliance of Long Island/ Queens. It is titled "We All Have Lupus" Thank you to the Lupus Alliance and the Board of Directors for this honor. I speak

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“Addition by Subtraction” – Sometimes Less Is More: A Lesson In

There comes a time in everyone's life when they must re-evaluate things. For some it is their career path or material possessions, for others it is their choice in friends or bonds with family. For me, this year, it has been a little of everything. I have spent a better part of the past year ta

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The Blessings of Chronic Illness

At the time of this writing, it is a few weeks before Thanksgiving in the US. Each day, I must fight an overwhelming array of symptoms caused by Sjogren's syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic myofascial pain, hypothyroidism, diabetes, celiac disease, gastroparesis and periodic limb movement disorder. I a

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Yes, I Still Have Lupus

This Sunday October 19th is the annual Lupus Walk fundraiser for the Lupus Alliance in my local area. I am a person living with Lupus. My family and I pride ourselves on being one of the top fundraising teams every year. We make phone calls or send email messages to family, friends and co-workers. W

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The Pain of Disease and the Triumph of Togetherness

* Looking back on 5 years of ButYouDontLookSick.com There’s a pain that can be worse than any physical disease. It’s the loneliness you feel when you see your friends go out and do things without a second thought and how that is an impossible dream for you. How the simple act of attending class

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Humor: Everything I need to know, I learned from my 4 year old.

Ever see those posters saying "Everything I need to know I learned in Kindergarten?" Well my son is four, only in pre-school, and has taught me a ton. I find this particularly humorous, because this is the kid who insists he can go on a field trip to the future. (I usually tell him Why not?!) Her

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Why I Participate in the Lupus Walk

It is the beginning of October and you know what that means to us here at Butyoudontlooksick.com... It is Lupus Awareness month. For this month, I try to post mostly about Lupus or lupus related stories, reviews etc. I also spend a lot of time talking about my efforts with the Lupus Walk in my local

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Thoughts on Aging

The first thing out of my mouth most mornings is usually some sort of multi- syllabic utterance such as marghblamhaba which can be loosely translated into many phrases such as, Oy vay!, Mon Dieu!, Dear Lord!, or What???, depending on your cultural and religious preferences. My thoughts quickly go to

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Never ask – “How are you feeling today?”

It's taken me a long time to get out of the automatic habit of saying, "How are you?" when I see someone. That question would be all right to ask most healthy people because the spontaneous response of "fine" would be appropriate. I have discovered that people who are ill hate that simple question

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