It's Never Lupus? May 10 is World Lupus Day

If I hear "It's never lupus" one more time I'm going to personally track down the writers of House MD and force them to clean my toilets with their tongues. And we have 3 toilets.

I have a few questions for these writers:
Why are you running an anti-awareness campaign? Would you do this for any other equally terrible disease? Would you say "It's never cancer?" or "It's never MS?" or "It's never Parkinson's?"
How about "It's never a heart attack?" No, because if this were a comedy club, you'd be booed off the stage.

Why does anyone think "it's never lupus" is funny? My only guess is that it's because the word "lupus" sounds funny, like dodo bird or cuckoo clock. I wish we could rename the disease to better reflect how awful it is. How about "crapstorm?" No, still too funny.

It's never lupus... Having had lupus for 20 years now, I've had it cause anemia, kidney failure, stroke, hair loss, weight loss, congestive heart failure... oh, I guess none of that ever happened either.

I was watching House MD- the episode where the patient was in Antartica in a lab and had to be examined by House long-distance, over teleconference. While he was brainstorming about all the possible things she could be suffering from, one of the things House guessed was... LUPUS!!! (this coming from Mr "it's never lupus!"). But in order to keep their running "joke" intact, they referred to it as "SLE." (systemic lupus erythmatosis). Nice way to have your cake and eat it too, a-holes.

Because there are 1.5 million people or more in the US alone with lupus, it's just a matter of time before someone on the House MD writing staff (or someone in their family) develops lupus. I don't wish it on them, but the odds are good. Oh wait, I forgot, there's no such thing as lupus.

What a relief then. I'll just stop getting blood tests and chalk up my years of symptoms (and by "symptoms," I mean stroke, kidney failure, congestive heart failure) to hypochondria. Or maybe it was psychosomatic. In which case, if kidney failure is psychosomatic, then everything is. Cancer, MS, all of it.

And the world is flat, and we never landed on the moon.

"It's never lupus?"- it's never funny.

Prednisone

In honor of lupus awareness month, today's topic is the drug almost all of us with lupus are faced with having to take: prednisone.

Or as some of us pred-vets call it, dreadnisone.

It is used for everything- rashes, asthma, sarcoidosis, inflammation of any kind.
If they don't know what to do, throw prednisone at it. And it often works.
The problem is the side effects. And side effects seems like such a dainty word for things like osteoporosis, cataracts, diabetes, hair loss, obesity- is it really just a "side effect" when it can be classified as a disease?

Yes, prednisone saved my life. But if I had stayed on it, I would have ended up with even more health problems.

But what I really want to know is this:
Why, when my cat and I were both on prednisone (he had a flea allergy)- why, I want to know, was his cherry-flavored while mine tasted like Ajax? Discuss amongst yourselves, and sing along to the prednisone song:

May is lupus awareness month

How do I say this? Happy lupus awareness month? That seems really inappropriate. We're not really celebrating the fact that this disease exists. On top of that, I'm a day late in getting started commemorating the beginning of this month.

I think we're finally getting it together. For a while, October was lupus awareness month. Then it was October for some lupus groups and May for others. And it was purple ribbons for some lupus groups and orange for others (I think that's still the case). And then there's House, MD. He's no help at all. I'll save him for another blog.

All that aside, here we are. For a disease that has over 1.5 million people diagnosed, lupus still needs some serious help in the awareness department. One of the reasons we need awareness is to cut down on the odd reactions we get from other people when we're finally diagnosed.

The comments I got when I was first diagnosed ranged from hurtful to just weird. Here I present to you, from my book (How Can You *Not* Laugh at a Time Like This?," The Top 10 Annoying Things to Say to Someone Who's Just Been Diagnosed.

Product review and giveaway: Pain Relief Cream "Topricin"

Welcome to the first-ever product review/ giveaway on this blog!
The product we're reviewing and giving away (one gift basket only) is Topricin, a homeopathic pain relief cream.

I've been using it myself for the last few days. Conveniently (or not, depending on how you look at it), I've had significant discomfort this week after driving 800 miles in one day (by myself). So I had some legitimate pain to try out this cream on. And I gotta say, it really helped.

One the pain scale of 0-10 (zero being "no pain at all" and 10 being "i'm going to jump off a roof if this pain doesn't stop!"), I'd say for me this cream is completely effective all the way up to an 8-level pain. If something is 9 or 10, I'll try the cream first, then if it doesn't work, resort to taking advil or some other pill out of my cabinet.

Because no pharmaceutical or over-the-counter drugs are without risk (or side effects), I am always in favor of finding a more natural solution to life's little problems (and the big ones, too).

Topricin is all natural. Being homeopathic, it works with your body to heal the source of the pain, rather than only suppressing symptoms. Although it does also relieve symptoms.

The website suggests using it for some very painful conditions, including fibromyalgia, plantar fasciitis, carpal tunnel and neuropathy.

Topricin, from what I can tell, comes in 3 formulas:
1) general pain relief cream
2) "junior" pain relief (for kids)
3) foot pain relief

They are available in tubes, tubs, or "single serving" packets (great for travel/ in your purse or backpack). It's non-greasy and has no smell. I give it 2 thumbs up!

So, I have this big beautiful basket of topricin to give away!

How to enter:

1. Mandatory:  In order to enter to win, just leave a comment on this post. Don't forget to include your email address (ex: SpiffyStuffBlog at gmail dot com --like this to avoid spamming from bots).  You can't win if I can't contact you.  ;)  This counts as one entry.
2. Optional:  
1. visit me on youtube (www.youtube.com ), find a song of mine that made you laugh, and come back here to tell us all about it in a comment. Again, don't forget to include your email address
2.  Instead of limiting this contest to those who follow my blog, I'm going to make following this blog a separate entry.  Make a separate post saying that you follow this blog.  Again, don't forget to include your email address.  This counts as one entry.
3. "Like" (hit the "like" button) Carla's music page on facbeook (http://www.facebook.com/ ) Please post your Facebook username (probably just your full name) so we can verify this entry.  Again, please include your email address.  This counts as one entry.
4. Advertise this contest: A Tweet, a Facebook mention, a blog post about this contest on your own blog, anything like this would count as an additional, separate entry.  Be sure to post links or usernames so that your shout-out can be verified.  And finally--don't forget to include your email address.

This contest will close promptly at 10:00 p.m. EDST on Wednesday, May 18, 2011.

Shortly thereafter I will pick a winner based on their post number which will be picked by the free number generator at Random.org.  I will post the winner here for all the world to see, and notify the winner to see where/how to ship your fabulous gift basket of Topricin.  Once the winner has been confirmed, we'll send the prize your way.   

Meanwhile, you can visit the website of this giveaway's sponsor right here:
http://www.topricin.com/


Carla Ulbrich, The Singing Patient,
is the author of "How Can You *Not* Laugh at a Time Like This?"
Get Carla's Book at Amazon.com
www.thesingingpatient.com

Therapeutic Humor

I've just returned from the AATH conference. AATH stands for Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor. http://www.aath.org

You'll note by the name that, yes, they promote humor, but they also specify that it be therapeutic. Meaning it helps, not harms. Anyone who spent any time on the school playground knows that humor can be harmful and even cruel. But humor can also uplift and even break the spell of sadness and despair.

Humor was a tremendous help to me at the worst points in my illness, and continues to be that spice that makes every day a little better, and every person I meet easier to get to know.

So how do we use humor in a way that is safe and helpful? My thoughts at the moment are these:

- Create distance. Comedy is pain plus distance. The distance can be time or just gaining a new perspective on things; looking at things from a distance, even though they are recent or even ongoing. You may have heard that comedian Gilbert Gottfried was fired from his gig as voice of the AFLAC duck because he made jokes about the Japan Tsunami very shortly after it happened. As they say in the comedy clubs " Too soon!" There wasn't any distance yet. And some things are never funny. Which brings us to:

- Stick to what you know personally. Do not make fun of other people's problems if you have not been there. I don't make jokes about being black (because I'm not), or Jewish (I'm also not), or even any illnesses I haven't been through. it's very important to me that I stick to my own experiences so that the audience knows I am not mocking their pain. I can make fun of my pain, or of situations, or of groups that I belong to (Southerners, insomniacs, women, musicians, people with lupus)- as long as I'm speaking in terms of "we." Look, we've all done enough stupid stuff in our lifetimes to write hours of comedy. We don't need to make things up.

- Use comedy to build up and unite, not to tear down and make one person or group superior to another. Put-down comedy (Don Rickles, Lisa Lampanelli) can be undeniably funny, but it makes me feel icky afterwards. I think some comedy is just kind of neutral, like Seinfeld and Jeff Foxworthy (observational comedy that points out the absurdities in life)- it doesn't harm anyone, but it isn't particularly view-changing. Making people laugh has enough value in itself, especially when you can do so without harming anyone. But then there is humor that is not only funny, but therapeutic. It actually makes you see things differently (Christopher Titus). I hope I can become one of those people. Someone who makes a point with their comedy- educates, enlightens, gives hope.

Who are some comedians who you think are making a positive difference with their humor?

Carla Ulbrich, The Singing Patient,
is the author of "How Can You *Not* Laugh at a Time Like This?"
Get Carla's Book at Amazon.com
www.thesingingpatient.com