Chronically Illing Out

Ch-illing In Review Del got her autism diagnosis at 23, two to three days before her first law school classes. ADHD followed at 25, then hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, POTS, and MCAS early this year. Her advice to parents weighing whether to test a kid: trust the person telling you something is off, because she has yet to meet an autistic person who wished they hadn’t been diagnosed. The shar...

Ch-illing In Review Fall shows up in our bodies before it shows up on the calendar. Nick’s knees have started catching mid-step, and Soso, three weeks sick and now on antibiotics, put it plainly: chronic illness is hard enough, but “if you’re sick on top of being ill,” everything gets heavy. Beth went up Mount Rainier to shoot this week’s meditation, needed her inhaler at 5,400 feet, and spent hou...

Chilling in Review We open October the way we normally open most things — sideways. Through a 12-foot skeleton that won’t fit on Beth’s balcony and a yellow orb weaver Nick refuses to evict from his fence line — before turning to the month’s heavier calendar. Beth names Breast Cancer Awareness Month (”Protect Second Base”) and reminds listeners that men get breast cancer too; Nick adds Domestic Vi...

Summary Nick, Beth, Doc Steph, and Soso opened with a living armadillo, a salty squirrel, and a meme war. Overall, today was about growing up. Steph described her son turning up grumpy and private at lunch, and the relief she felt. A kid who doesn’t want to talk about his life has a life of his own. Beth, after raising four kids through their own chronic illnesses, is still finding herself, now th...

Chronic Illness In Review Nick and Soso held the table on their own this week, with Steph and Beth out, and opened with a line that set the tone: every week is a week right now. Nick admitted he has been quieter lately, worn down by illness moving through his extended family at the same time. Soso came in rested for once, after a new treatment finally gave her a full night’s sleep and the energy t...

Summary E47 opens with four people admitting they are already tired on a Monday, and that admission turns out to be the episode’s argument. Steph names the mechanism early — the morning reminded her “that I need to focus on myself if I want to really stay regulated and sane and not inhale everybody else’s anxiety” — and the hour keeps testing it. Soso walks through the bargain chronic illness forc...

Summary Nick Paro, Beth Cruz, Stephanie Wilson, and Soso came on air on Labor Day itself and made the holiday do double duty. Nick tied the weekend most people spend grilling to the reason anyone has it — organized labor won the weekend and the eight-hour day — and then extended the argument to Texas v. Kennedy , the 504 settlement effort that would erode Olmstead and, with it, the right of chroni...

Ch-Illing In Review Summary This week starts with kids leaving for school and ends up somewhere more interesting: how differently wired nervous systems actually process relief. Nick uses music to steer his emotions on purpose — classical when he wants to feel the feeling, wordless electronica when he needs to write code without typing the lyrics he hears. Stephanie describes the opposite reaction,...

Ch-Illing Out in Review Today’s conversation opens where the guilt actually lives: not just in the flare itself but in the apology to the self that follows it. Soso returns after two months away, mid-flare, and asks Nick the question the show keeps circling — how do you accept a limit when the person you’re disappointing is your kid? Our answer: reframing it. Nick names the 80-hour weeks he once c...

Actions You Can Take * Say No to Crip Crow! Get your Sick of this Shit merch! * Check out the Sick of this Shop! Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States: * deflock.me Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders: * Orders Project * Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76 Learn empathy forward, human centered, experiment based Leadership & Gr...

Say No To Crip Crow “America has not fully fulfilled its commitment to guaranteeing equality for all since its founding nearly 250 years ago… Disability Community for Democracy will urge Congress to enact legislation that codifies the Olmstead decision, ensuring that states cannot compel the re-institutionalization of individuals with disabilities.” — Nieta Greene, CEO, from Disability Community f...

Say No To Crip Crow “America has not fully fulfilled its commitment to guaranteeing equality for all since its founding nearly 250 years ago… Disability Community for Democracy will urge Congress to enact legislation that codifies the Olmstead decision, ensuring that states cannot compel the re-institutionalization of individuals with disabilities.” — Nieta Greene, CEO, from Disability Community f...

Ch-Illing In Review Today was a meandering Monday where we didn’t really have a focus going in — and we came out of it having a blast. We celebrate the amazing artistry of Cris Palomino with Lady Liberty showing off her Disability Pride. * Check out the new Disability Pride T-Shirt and Disability Pride Tote Bag at the Sick of this Shop . We follow that up with a great time showing off all sorts of...

Ch-Illing In Review Today we welcome on Amelia Hall — creator of Trailblazing with CP and Accessibility Specialist — for a wonderful conversation into Amelia’s story and the role that CP (Cerebral Palsy) has played in her life, how it has helped to shape her views on accessibility and equity, and how she advocates for everyone’s rights. Take a moment to subscribe and follow Amelia Hall ’s work — a...

ChIlling In Review The day before Juneteenth, the DOJ quietly released a memo reinterpreting the 1999 Olmstead decision — the ruling that keeps disabled people in their communities instead of institutions. It's not a law, and that's the point. This week, NH state rep, psych nurse, and congressional candidate Paige Beauchemin joins Nieta Greene of Disability Community for Democracy, Nick, Beth, and...

Chronically Illing In Review Today was a hard and necessary conversation—the DOJ is openly coming after our right to visibly exist as a person with disabilities. Take a moment to read through Nieta Greene ’s official statement on the DOJ Olmstead Memo and my article from this morning. We must all be loud and actioning on this — we will not be erased. Disclaimer Chronically Illing Out is a podcast...

Meditation of the Day * link to follow for “Paws for a moment” by Beth Cruz — with pictures from Beth Cruz , Stephanie G Wilson, PhD , Soso's World , Casey is NeuroDivergent Hodgepodge , and Courtney M 🇨🇦🏳️‍🌈 ! Disclaimer Chronically Illing Out is a podcast and weekly roundtable discussion that provides a safe space for real chronic illness and mental health conversations—by people with lived exp...

Chronic Illness In Review This week’s Chronically Illing Out lands on an uncomfortable truth: the disability community is fracturing itself from the inside. Nick Paro opens by naming the divisions playing out on Substack right now — people attacking each other, misrepresenting each other — and frames the whole hour around a single question: how do we bridge the gaps within our own ranks before we...

Chronic Illness In Review Dr. Greeley Miklashek is 80, recovering from long COVID and a second round of prostate-cancer radiation, and unwilling to apologize for any of it. He’s also a retired neuropsychiatrist who treated 25,000 people, wrote Stress R Us , and spent a career arguing that what most of his colleagues called “disease” was, more often than not, a body trying to survive chronic stress...

Chronic Illness In Review The Monday after Mother’s Day begins with a head cold, a missing co-host, and a discussion on grief. Beth is out sick — appropriately, on a show about chronic illness — so Nick Paro, Soso, and Stephanie Wilson, PhD, hold the morning between them. The heart of today’s show is all about the chronically ill body keeping track of loss whether the dishes are done or not, and i...

Chronic Illness In Review This week’s discussion pulls a single thread — what does it actually take to function when your diagnoses keep stacking? Mack Devlin, a former journalist now medically retired, joins Nick, Beth, Soso, and Stephanie with one of the most compounding stacks the show has hosted: Becker’s muscular dystrophy, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 LADA diabetes, hypertension, depression,...

Chronic Illness In Review This week’s panel takes the long way around to a simple idea — that the labels we use to sort each other are, at best, a starting place, and that the most interesting parts of a person tend to live just past where the label stops. Nick, Beth, Soso, and Steph sit with guest Stefan Pasek — a Polish-born writer in Minnesota with PDD-NOS — and let the conversation move from “...

Trigger warning : this episode contains discussion on sexual assault and violence. Chronic Illness in Review Marilyn Bretherick arrives at this episode as someone who has spent the last year doing the hard, unglamorous work of starting over from the inside. She carries CPTSD, ADHD, and anxiety — and a background in sexual abuse and human trafficking that she describes with a precision that only co...

Chronic Illness In Review Kait Justice arrives at this episode as someone who’s lived—and advocated—through chronic illness - either labeled or not. She carries fibromyalgia, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, dysautonomia with POTS, cervical cranial instability, and a decade’s worth of misdiagnosis. And the conversation Nick, Beth, Soso, and Stephanie navigate with her speaks to the messy reality: what it m...

Disclaimer: Chronically Illing Out is a podcast and weekly roundtable discussion that provides a safe space for real chronic illness and mental health conversations—by people with lived experience. We are not trained professionals—and we do not claim to be—rather, we discuss our stories and current events to build community and solidarity. Know that you are not alone—and if you are in crisis, call...