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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

Living in the Meantime

One of the quietest, most exhausting parts of living with serious illness is the uncertainty or the waiting, the what-ifs, the future you can't quite plan for. In this Living With It conversation, members and social worker KrisAnn Talarico explored what it takes to keep going when the future feels unsettled.

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

Don't Just Assume It's the Disease: Agitation May Have Causes You Can Fix 

Sudden confusion, agitation, or aggression in someone with dementia doesn't always mean the disease is progressing. For Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month, caregivers in the Smart Patients community share how an infection, a new medication, or unspoken pain can trigger a sharp behavior change, and why it's worth checking before you accept it as the "new normal."

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

I Am…More Than My Headache

For Migraine & Headache Awareness Month, we’re sharing how members of our community describe what migraine means to them . Their answers make one thing clear: a migraine is far more than "just a headache." These are their words describing the pain, the long road to a diagnosis, and the determination to keep going.

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

Willing to Participate: What Gets in the Way

For Clinical Trials Awareness Month, Smart Patients is sharing what patients tell each other about trials and what it suggests for the teams running them. One finding is that patients want to join clinical trials, but sometimes it is the logistics, undisclosed costs, and information gaps that keeps them from doing it.

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

When Patients Move Faster Than Peer Review

Can you trust what AI tells you about your health? That's the question our Sjögren's community put to AI health tool expert Erika Warren of Inciteful Med over three a three-day Ask the Expert session. The answer was more nuanced — and interesting — than a simple yes or no.

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

I Am…Between Stable and Well

Systemic lupus erythematosus affects more than 1.5 million Americans, yet 63% of patients are misdiagnosed before receiving the correct diagnosis. For Lupus Awareness Month, we are sharing real voices from the Smart Patients lupus community describing what it’s like to live between what the labs say and what the body knows.

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

I Am…Paying Attention

For fourteen years, Robin has shown up every single day for patients and caregivers navigating serious illness — contributing nearly 53,000 posts to the Smart Patients community. Her journey from cancer caregiver to trusted peer support leader is a testament to what happens when lived experience meets purpose.

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

The Grief That Comes Before the Loss 

Anticipatory grief is one of caregiving's most universal yet least recognized experiences. This conversation with experts from the Family Caregiver Alliance explores how caregivers can recognize and name this quiet, accumulating grief, and what small, practical steps can help them find support before burnout takes hold.

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

I Am…Making the Next Decision

Every year, nearly 83,000 Americans are diagnosed with bladder cancer — and most will face it more than once. This Bladder Cancer Awareness Month, we're sharing the words of the people living it.

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

Between Appointments: What Two Sjögren's Doctors Want You to Know

For the estimated 4 million Americans living with Sjögren's disease, the path to diagnosis is rarely straightforward — and the care that follows isn't always better. For Sjögren's Awareness Month, we asked two doctors three questions that don't always make it into the appointment.

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

What Chronic Illness Looks Like From the Inside

What does chronic illness actually look like from the inside — not clinically, but on a random Tuesday afternoon when you're figuring it out alone? The latest Living With It conversation gathered the accumulated tools of people who have learned to stay in motion when circumstances would rather stop them.

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

I Am On, I Am Off, I Am…Still Here

Parkinson's disease is hard to diagnose and even harder to manage day to day. This April, for Parkinson's Awareness Month, we are sharing the unfiltered voices of patients and caregivers who know exactly what that means.

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

Life Is Good: Eighteen Years of Knowing It

K has been living with kidney cancer since 2008. In that time, she has outlasted more than a handful of surgeries, a clinical trial gone wrong, and a depression that nearly swallowed her whole. Through it all, she holds a quiet certainty that life is good.

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

Meet Pete: The Man Who Keeps Showing Up

When Pete Ramsey received his stage 4 kidney cancer diagnosis eight years ago, doctors told him he might never walk without a limp or play golf again. Today, he's first in line for a promising clinical trial, and showing others what resilience looks like when you refuse to stop asking "what's next?"

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

The Sentence That Stopped Everything

Sometimes the most important thing a community can do is stop a conversation mid-sentence. That's exactly what happened when Smart Patients launched Living With It. It turns out, getting it wrong is sometimes how you get it right.

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Chris Carneal Chris Carneal

I Am…Planting a Flag

Colorectal cancer is now one of the deadliest cancers for adults under 50, and the blue flags planted across the National Mall this March make that impossible to ignore. But awareness grows not just through advocacy — it grows every time a patient shares their story and helps someone else feel less alone.

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