ChronicBabe Blog Carnival #3: Learning to Live with Pain

Loolwa of Dancing with Pain says those of us with chronic pain and disability face a host of challenges getting our Venus on. Here's a look at her own personal dating hurdles and her stabs at overcoming them.

Gerri Curless at 50 is the new 40 writes about her journey of being diagnosed, living with daily pain, and what she does to lessen her pain (though admittedly, it hasn't helped so far).

The Migrainista says she's learned a few things after living with almost daily migraine pain for the past four years. In this post she outlines the five big lessons she's learned so far in her journey.

Elizabeth Kaylene at e·liz·a·what writes about remission. "I have a hard time learning to live with my chronic illness. I just want it to go away. A girl can dream, right?"

SR at The Life of a Grad Student with Lupus says, Sorry, Sir, "Damsel in Distress" Just Isn’t Working for Me Anymore. " This is our battle. We are strong. We can be our own knights in shining armour!"

Wendy is Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired. She shares the 4Ps of living with chronic pain - ways to be proactive about managing your pain.

Sam at TalkingBloodGlucose talks about her diagnosis of Painful Diabetic Neuropathy, and her experience in coming to terms with it.

Lisa Copen, founder of Rest Ministries Chronic Illness Pain Support, explains how Living with Chronic Pain Isn’t Fun . . . But it Can Be Funny!

Judith Westerfield shares her personal Visions of the Invisible for Those with Fibromyagia and Life Altering Conditions - and today, she's writing about Living with God, Aliens & Pain.

At Oh My Aches and Pains, Selena offers us a Chronic Pain Toolkit.

Our pal Kerri of Six Until Me just had a baby, but she's already blogging again. (Yay!) "Diabetes can be a life of pain," she tells us. "Or it can be a life of inspiration. And with the birth of my daughter two weeks ago, I've learned that I've learned to live, and love, beyond any of the pain of diabetes." Read all about BSparl's Birthday.

In Ten, Lindsay Wright of RunLindsayRun says, "the learning curve for chronic pain looks very different when you start your journey as a child. In this post, I talk about what it was like to grow up sick - the advantages of forgetting your life before chronic pain and life lessons learned early as a result."

What's on Your Comfort Cart? Our pals at How to Cope with Pain talk about gathering resources in a very resourceful way. "Modeled after a program at a hospital which brings comfort items - lotions, music, inspirational books, etc - to hospital patients, this post suggests creating your own "comfort box" which will keep favorite comfort items at hand when you have pain."

Angela Shipp of health-e inspiration asks, "What do you like and dislike about chronic illness?"

Scared of Every Little Ache and Pain? Kairol Rosenthal at Everything Changes says, "After years of coping with cancer as a chronic illness, you’d think that the small aches and pains of life – like having "the trots" as my grandmother would say – are no big deal.  Not for me.  Now, when I feel even the smallest pain, I flip out."

At This Year's Masterpiece, Nessie tells us how every thorn has its rose; pain can turn us into people who do bad things — if we let it.

Dana Marton of I Already Gave My Right Arm to Be Ambidextrous! shares a personal story about how Attitude Is Worth A Million Bucks! So true.

Maya Klauber of Loving With Chronic Illness talks about Staying Tuned In. The post recounts a bought of serious depression I had in 2007 and the crucial lessons I learned from it, highlighting the importance of staying tuned in to ourselves and our emotions as we cope with pain. We all have enough on our plates without giving ourselves a hard time for feeling the way we do!

Like what you see here? Why not enter the next ChronicBabe Blog Carnival!

We're having so much fun running a blog carnival! But maybe there's room for improvement; we want to hear your suggestions. Let us know what you think in the discussion over at the Forum.

Want to participate in the next carnival? It's two weeks from today (publish date: May 18, 2010), and the theme is Parenting with Chronic Illness. We would love to hear your thoughts on the topic! If you want to participate, send us your name (as you would like it to appear), the name of your blog, the name of your post, and a 1-2 sentence description of the post. We'll let you know if you're accepted. Send all that to chronic babe @ gmail dot com. The deadline is Sunday, May 16, at 10pm CST.

Thanks again to all the participants, and to our pals at Fibrochondriac for helping make this blog carnival a reality!