My Chronic Life

To continue with my posts about working as a blogger, you’ll need a web site for your blog. This is one of the most important decisions you’ll make about blogging and earning money. Having an impartial site to check out the various hosting companies helps a great deal.

You can compare on the costs, ratings, reviews, speed, cost of domain names, and packages all on one site. There’s a specific review of best blog hosting too. Consider that you may want a web site also later on to promote your blogs as you grown and have more than one blog. So learning about web hosting for other than blogging is something to begin to look into.

Whether you’re beginning to blog or a seasoned blogger like me finding the best web hosting is a way to make your sure your blog is always available and a way to be sure that you save money too. For me that’s very important. For other people with chronic illnesses I know it is important too.

I am an advocate for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. When something is happening that offends me I have to do something about it. The use of the R word is way too common. Children are using it. Children who don’t even understand the word’s meaning.

It’s heard on TV, the radio and in movies. One movie in particular is “Tropic Thunder”. I think this has been the breaking point for activists. There is now a backlash against this movie and a challenge sponsored by such groups as Special Olympics, Autistic Self Advocacy Network, United Cerebal Palsy and others to stop using the R word. Their website has a place for you to post your challenge. There are badges available for you to place on your blogs too.

On my blog Brain Foggles, I wrote a post about this challenge and included a video you may want to view. Please spread the word, take the challenge and teach others, especially your children about how hurtful one word can be.

I met Goodies for Mom on the Mom Bloggers Club when she wrote about needing people who have had experience with any type of blood cancer to write a post about it. Since I’ve had the unfortunate situation happen to my sister I knew I wanted to do anything I could to help out.

My sister was only 32 when she was diagnosed with Leukemia and within 6 months she was gone. She had a 9 month old little boy, a 3 year old little girl, a husband, Mom, 2 sisters, nieces, nephews and cousins, aunts and uncles and lots and lots of friends. She was a joy to be around. She was funny and loving. She was brave and angry. She was full of hope and was told she’d live to be a grandmother. She lost all of her hair and was still beautiful. She couldn’t wait to exercise and run again when her treatments were over. She loved her children with all of her heart.

I was her stem cell donor. I was pregnant when she was diagnosed but her doctors said it was best to wait for me to have my baby and donate my bone marrow. Then when it was time for the transplant, the insurance wouldn’t pay, the doctors thought she’d be better off with stem cells instead of marrow and so it went.

Three weeks after enduring the strong chemotherapy and getting my stem cells she was gone. She had complained the night before that her stomach hurt her so much. For the first time she accepted pain medicine. The next morning, My Mom who stayed with her in the hospital gave her a sponge bath because she was too weak to shower. My sister didn’t remember much about the night before.

Her husband came to see her and my Mom took a shower. She heard my brother-in-law screaming. She got out of the shower to see nurses and doctors trying to revive my sister. They put her on life support but there was no brain waves, no sign of life. She was taken off that day.

Today with the advances made by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society she may have been cured or given more time. I know that her insurance company wouldn’t have declared the bone marrow treatment as “experimental”.

There are prizes listed at Goodies for Moms for those that blog about this cause, but the best prize of all would be a cure for all types of blood cancers including leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma.

Visit Friends of Heroes National Light the Night Team and how you can help raise money for a cure, for education, for support and for awareness. The money raised will go to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to help them attain these goals.

Spread the word!

I was pleasantly surprised to be given the Arte Y Pico award by a health blogger that I greatly admire, Sophia at Healthy Perspecives. Her blog is filled with up to date information on health issues that affect everyone. She provides recipes for foods that are nutritious but tasty, easy to read and understand health tips, information about alternative medicine and much more.

Here’s the information about this award:

1. Choose five blogs you consider deserving of this award. (Creativity, interesting material, etc.)

2. Each award includes the name of the owner of the blog and his/her link

3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself

4. Award winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y Pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award

I am happy to forward this award to:

1. Chronic Chick Talk
2. Life In The Autoimmune Lane
3. Loving Life With Diabetes
4. Migraine Chick
5. Reasonably Well

It was nice to find the comment about this award waiting for me on my blog. It was much better than getting a phone call from a debt collection agencies!

I plan on running two blog contest in the next few weeks. One will be here. I think the prizes will be books about chronic illness. I think. It’s difficult to come up with ideas for prizes but I’m working on it.

I have been writing more over at one of my other blogs, Mickey Fanatic, the blog that got lost in the shuffle. This blog is about all things Disney especially family travel. The contest there will be soon too. And I’m also trying to figure out what prizes to give out.

I’ve seen many blog contest ask people to sponsor prizes so I’m doing the same on both of my blogs. If you’re interested in doing this, please either leave a comment or use the Advertise Page to contact me. Please refrain from spilling the beans about what prize you’re sponsoring. I really would like to save that information for when I announce the contest. Some suggestions would be Entrecard credits, anything to do with health, like books or advertising on a health blog, blogroll links for high PR blogs, etc. Your ideas are worth it! For all I know I may get some mortgage lenders wanting to help those of us who spend lots of money on medical bills!

I’ll be on vacation for the coming week so I won’t be able to moderate your comments or answer emails but as soon as I return I’ll take care of this, promise.

If you’ve been thinking about blogging, already have a blog but desperately need another one because you’re so addicted that one isn’t enough, or you want a blog on your own domain, get ready for some important info.

Go on over to my other blog, Brain Foggles and check out my contest.

You have a chance to win an SEO optimized Wordpress Blog with one year of hosting, a customized header, your choice of theme, support and technical assistance, plugins, keyword search and help creating a niche. The value is about $125. This is open to everyone, not just those in the USA. The end date for this is May 30th. Don’t wait!

This is a perfect way for anyone with health issues to earn money from home.

I’m a co-blogger on a new blog named doWAHdiddy. This is a collective effort along with two other bloggers. This blog focuses on Working At Home, hence the WAH in the title. We write about finding, maintaining and growing a business from home.

This is a blog that is a group project from the blogging forum The Advisory Panel. I am learning so much there about blogging from some very talented people that know the real deal on blogging. It’s an honor to have been chosen to help with writing the blog. I also won a blog with keyword search and set up from the March contest. Every month there are contests for taking part in the forum, getting referrals and starting new threads. Come join us and see what we’re learning about and earning too.

I’ve had the honor to be a guest blogger on Fighting Fatigue, which is an all inclusive health blog. This blog began to be exclusively about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia and Interstitial Cystitis. As Sandy continued to write she expanded her subjects to include other health issues. She is an advocate, pure and simple. She goes through life everyday with symptoms that are difficult to live with, yet she tries to help others through her informative, empathic writing.

My guest blogging post is about Sjogren’s Symptom. Sandy had previously provided many links to websites, support groups, blogs and books. Her lists are comprehensive. A lot of research goes into each post she writes. Please take the time to visit my post and her entire blog.

If you have a chronic illness or a disABILITY it is quite possible that you may not be able to work. I was in that position when I was terribly sick from the five autoimmune diseases I have plus anemia. The anemia was so bad that I had to get Iron through an IV on a weekly basis.

Now that I have the major chronic illness, Myasthenia Gravis under some control and I no longer am anemic that badly I work from home. I only work a few hours a day and if I’m not well I don’t work at all.

I’ve had to learn many things about working from home as a professional blogger. One of the most important things is marketing. I am a member of many social networks online and have placed links to my blogs every where I can.

Another way to market yourself is by using business cards. Professional bloggers hand them out to friends and family, to fellow bloggers at conventions and of course to advertisers. I learned about a site that not only helps you create your own business card but a logo design too.

Branding is also helpful in marketing. You want people to recognize you by an image or photo. Having a logo and business cards that incorporate that logo kills two birds with one stone.

The site logoyes.com was simple to use. It has a demo video to get you started if you need some extra help with the easy to follow directions. The whole process took me about 5 minutes to complete. It would have been shorter but I kept changing my mind about the logo because there were so many choices. I’m fickle, what can I say?

The finished product looks so professional. I was very pleased with my work, OK the site’s work. Here’s a look at what I would go with as this is a health blog:

Please bear with me as I work on this blog with the help of my good friend Jenn who is as baffled as me as to why no one can leave comments. I also can’t see my blogroll or archived posts on my dashboard.

There’s a 500 error when anyone tries to comment. Before we started trying to fix things it was even worse. I’d get a 501 error when I tried to sign out of my blog. That’s not happening any more so hopefully we’ll get things moving along soon.