At Health Stories Project, empowering patients and caregivers to share their authentic health journeys is at the heart of our business. Only from understanding such a journey – which is different for every person we encounter – can we authoritatively recommend strategies to…
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Performer and multiple sclerosis advocate Brittany Quiroz is keeping it real—and empowering others. If all the world is a stage, as William Shakespeare’s Jacques asserted around 400 years ago, most of us are metaphorical bit players whose challenges and dreams don’t factor into…
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Many people living with multiple illnesses don’t just manage symptoms, they also adhere to a medication schedule and may need to repeatedly adjust their overall regimen (with their doctors’ input) due to how medicines interact. Staying on top of treatments alone can have…
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Rosemary’s health concerns date back to 1984, when she was diagnosed with lupus and interstitial lung disease. In the decades since, she has been diagnosed with several other conditions, making each year more complex and challenging than the last. Looking back on her…
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This comic by Tatiana Gill was inspired by comments from our community. Have you been affected by a chronic health condition? Sign up to share your experiences with Health Stories Project!
Meet Kathryn Kathryn has been living with Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH) since 2006. Though it’s a serious condition, she doesn’t let it slow her down – not even on the tennis court! We asked Kathryn to share her story with our app. Here’s what she…
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Rain Blu was a young mother working as an emergency services dispatcher when she began to experience debilitating anxiety and bouts of dissociation. She’d get stuck in high panic mode for days on end. She started to wonder if she were going crazy….
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Getting the Diagnosis that No One Wants Judy started getting mammograms yearly when she was forty. Because she has dense breast tissue, her doctor decided that she should also have an ultrasound each year since dense breast tissue makes it more difficult to…
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Meet Eric Eric Grant is from Atlanta, Georgia and has been HIV+ since 2014. He wants to help others live out loud and believes that living positive can be positive living. We asked Eric to share his story with our app. Check it…
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If someone you love is dealing with depression, you might feel helpless, confused, overwhelmed, hopeless, frustrated, or even angry. You simply might not know what to do. This is fairly normal, people don’t know how to help people with these issues. One of…
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“Your son has achondroplasia.” When Heather Wahl Saylor went into labor in 1993, she had no idea that she was giving birth to a child with achondroplasia, a common form of dwarfism. In fact, it wasn’t until the hospital staff handed her the…
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About 7.5 million Americans suffer from psoriasis (the “p” is silent). A chronic inflammatory disease of the immune system, it primarily affects the skin and joints, but can also affect the fingernails, toenails, and even soft tissues like inside of the mouth. Inflammation…
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Not Just Another Cold The first decade of the 21st century was pretty rotten for Chris and her family. They experienced multiple losses of loved ones – some young, some old, none easy. They were also a two-career family with three children under…
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Humans are hardwired to be creative, so it’s no surprise that creativity plays a vital role in our health and happiness. From doodling to dancing, cooking to crafting, creative activities decrease stress and increase positive emotions. Looking at art and listening to music…
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It’s sudden, catastrophic, and costs our healthcare system billions of dollars every year. Sepsis, an overwhelming immune response that’s triggered by infection, strikes more than a million Americans annually. Also known as blood poisoning, sepsis spreads quickly and can lead to tissue damage,…
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IgA Nephropathy is not a common condition. About 1 in 100,000 people in the United States develops this serious kidney condition each year. For unknown reasons, men get it at about twice as often as women, and while it is sometimes found during…
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For people with schizophrenia, diagnosis can be a relief — all those symptoms finally start to make sense – but also a devastating and life-altering moment. Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder characterized by thoughts and experiences that are out of…
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Ulcerative colitis is a common, chronic inflammatory disease that results in long-term inflammation and ulcers in the large intestine. It can cause stomach discomfort and rapid emptying of the colon. Even though ulcerative colitis has no known cure, through medication and a disciplined…
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Smartphones and other web-connected devices have changed the way we live, putting a vast amount of information at our fingertips, entertaining us, and making countless tasks easier, including keeping tabs on health issues and wellness goals. They’re also expanding the ways in which…
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It might start with a throb behind your eye. Or maybe you see an aura; a bright spot or some other change in your vision. Perhaps you just get nauseated suddenly. Sometimes bright lights or sounds become all-of-a-sudden intolerable. Migraine headaches are experienced…
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Share Your Experiences with Pseudobulbar Affect to See if You Qualify for a $50 Honorarium Insult to injury. For many people, this saying describes what it feels like to be diagnosed with Pseudobulbar Affect (PBA). PBA is a neurologic condition that appears in…
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It all started with a simple itch. Jason Greenspan was watching TV, thinking about his upcoming senior prom, when he scratched himself and felt a small, hard lump in one of his testicles. “I had a gut feeling it was something,” says Greenspan,…
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When it comes to your health and happiness, a take-charge attitude can make a huge difference. There’s nothing selfish about self-care, which simply means actively taking care of you, whether it’s following a nutritious diet, practicing meditation, or indulging in a few hours…
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We all get sleepy during the day sometimes. A long meeting might lead to heavy eyelids, or a bus ride can bring on a bad case of the yawns. But the neurologic condition called Narcolepsy, which affects about 1 in 2,000 people, leads…
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Health Stories Project was created to give people opportunities to share their personal health experiences and to learn from the experiences of others.