Dawn Gibson

The Berlin Wall came down the night before my thirteenth birthday! Yes, I'm a lady of a certain age. I had a pair of parachute pants and two sets of...

Spondyloarthritis has lots of things going for it as far as treachery goes. It's hard to pronounce. People don't know what it is or mistakenly think it's rare. It's seronegative...

Have you ever had uninvited guests gate crash your holiday gathering? I like to think of myself as warm and welcoming, but people barging in on my carefully planned dinner...

I can't be the only one jealous that bears get to spend most of the holidays hibernating in caves. They go sauntering into their caves, easy as they please to nap...

Do you ever feel jealous that bears get to hibernate through the holidays? They go sauntering into their caves, easy as they please to nap through the lousy weather, shopping...

Have you ever seen a high drama press conference? They tend to follow a formula. Something big happened and we know that lots of uncomfortable and repetitive questions are about to fly...

Medical appointments seem simple enough: just book, show up, be seen, and follow up, right? Wrong! For many of us, patient care may as well be happening on the dark...

The summer of 2019 was the most stressful time of my life. I put The Dude (my elderly uncle and Ward) on hospice, sold his house on an emergency basis...

Have you ever fallen asleep watching one movie and woke up to another? One minute Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones, then you pull that soft blanket up under your chin...

The notion that people could fake a disability is widely held in our culture. Maybe it's a form of denial around life changing illness and disability? Maybe it's because we...

Imagine a spondylitis patient called Shawn. She's an African-American forty-something that most people think younger because she's prone to giggling, can't stop retweeting anything with frolicking otters, and wears lip...

Living with AS can feel like a buzz saw merry-go-round. The saw blades are composed of the health issues and symptoms we're fighting back against. The merry-go-round, a mash-up of...

Sometimes living with spondylitis feels like I'm on a bizarre game show. Where I'm the host and the medical community are contestants. We understand the topics and questions, but the...

I live in the same house my mother was raised in. It's had a few minor modifications, but we still use my grandmother's pots and pans, and her pictures are...

This means planning to rest, emphasizing your own boundaries, values, and priorities to maximize personal health and wellness. Holidays and celebrations turn up the social and cultural pressure to make...