Free Screen Magnifier Software

This isn’t where I usu­ally get geeky, but I think this util­ity might be use­ful to many readers.

I get notices from the Give­away of the Day and Game Give­away Of the Day sites each day as to what they have avail­able that day. They make arrange­ments with var­i­ous soft­ware pub­lish­ers to dis­trib­ute com­mer­cial soft­ware absolutely free in return for adver­tis­ing. The catch is that the soft­ware must be down­loaded and installed within the 24-hour period of the giveaway.

I’ve been watch­ing the site for a year or so, I think, and have down­loaded and tried quite a few pieces of soft­ware. I’ve never found any mal­ware in any of them, although I believe I’ve read men­tion of peo­ple get­ting unwanted soft­ware installed in a bun­dle because they didn’t pay enough atten­tion to what they were agree­ing to dur­ing an install.

Get­ting back to my point, today’s give­away is a nifty util­ity that will mag­nify a por­tion of your computer’s screen, enabling you to bet­ter make out tiny print or small details. I didn’t have one of these installed on my machine until about nine months ago, and I wouldn’t want to live with­out it now. There is a free util­ity built in to Win­dows, but it isn’t quite as robust as some of the other prod­ucts on the mar­ket. The descrip­tion for this one says:

Magic Lens Max is a real-time, intu­itive and advanced screen mag­ni­fier and desk­top viewer to zoom, rotate, enhance, view and cap­ture any area of the screen dis­play. With built-in highly opti­mized resam­pling and enhanc­ing fil­ters, Magic Lens Max quickly gen­er­ates high-quality lens view with clar­ity in var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions. It also lets you view­ing in dif­fer­ent color mode or through sep­a­rated color channels.

As I type this, there’s another 22 hours and 55 min­utes left to down­load and install Magic Lens Max. Why not give it a whirl?

(Yes, it’s a Win­dows app. Aren’t we the only ones who need such crutches?)

Oh — while I don’t find today’s free game offer­ing ter­ri­bly inter­est­ing, I have found some of the games to be very use­ful dis­trac­tions on days that involve too much pain to do any­thing and I can’t focus well enough to read. Pop­ping bub­bles or what­ever is a per­fectly mind­less pur­suit, and very con­ducive to zon­ing out and get my head away from the pain for a bit. I don’t do “twitch” games, or any­thing that requires a lot of dex­ter­ity or is com­pletely tied to speed. If I was that dex­trous and/or fast, I’d be doing some­thing more use­ful than play­ing com­puter games.

February 23, 2008  Tags: , accommodations, Magic Lens Max, software, utility  Posted in: Resources, Technical  No Comments

The Value of Education for Chronic Illness Patients

Paula Kamen, author of All In My Head, talks about the value of edu­ca­tion in cop­ing with chronic ill­ness in an excel­lent edi­to­r­ial in the New York Times.
Leav­ing the Rab­bit Hole. This pas­sage, in par­tic­u­lar, spoke to me:

The worst thing, to me, about hav­ing a non-stop multi-year headache isn’t nec­es­sar­ily the pain. Or the way it tends to dis­rupt inti­mate rela­tion­ships, empty all finan­cial reserves, and sab­o­tage the best-laid career plans. It’s not even the end­less bar­rage of (albeit well-meaning) sug­ges­tions for “cures” from every­one you meet, most of which you’ve already tried any­way (except for the colon cleans­ing and the Jews for Jesus conversion).

No, it’s the emo­tional suf­fer­ing – from all the guilt and the shame, of patients like me think­ing it’s our entire fault, and maybe all in our heads.

She also men­tions a good site for any­one who has prob­lems with migraines, Rob­bins Headache Clinic.

February 19, 2008  Tags: chronic daily headache, chronic illness, Education, migraines, Pain, Paula Kamen  Posted in: Education, Pain, Resources  One Comment

& Fibromyalgia: Lessons Learned and Other Random Thoughts">Excellent article: Pregnancy & Fibromyalgia: Lessons Learned and Other Random Thoughts

ButY­ouDont­Look­Sick has a mar­velous arti­cle up today: ButYouDontLookSick.com : Preg­nancy & Fibromyal­gia: Lessons Learned and Other Ran­dom Thoughts.

I’m in the “0.08% chance of that hap­pen­ing” group, like the author. I was sick all the time through­out my one suc­cess­ful preg­nancy. Yes, all day, every day, from about a week after con­cep­tion ’til months after the deliv­ery, because it took that long before all the hor­mones set­tled back down. My tummy hasn’t been the same since—I get sick to my stom­ach far more eas­ily now than I ever did pre-pregnancy.

I also felt seri­ously mis­led, as I’d heard about this “morn­ing sick­ness” thing, but all the time sick­ness? Nobody talks about that!

That was in 1990, and I wasn’t diag­nosed with FMS until 1993. I doubt my trou­ble had as much to do with fibromyal­gia as to the fact that I’ve had hor­monal prob­lems (PCOS, par­tic­u­larly) since hit­ting puberty. My body just doesn’t like high hor­mone levels.

Any­way, head on over to ButY­ouDont­Look­Sick and com­ment. They’ll be happy :-)

February 4, 2008   Posted in: Fibromyalgia  No Comments

ME and FMS">Responses to various comments about ME and FMS

Some of the com­ments are pretty old by now, but there are cer­tain themes that come back, over and over again. I’ve decided to answer them once, and that’s it.

ME and FMS are not “lifestyle” dis­eases. Researchers have found genetic, neu­ro­log­i­cal and car­di­o­log­i­cal anom­alies, so get off that blame-the-victim bull­shit. We know bet­ter. We’ve done the diet and exer­cise dance. We’ve tried air-cleaners and remov­ing tox­ins and nat­ural cleansers and vit­a­mins and health foods, and while some of them are nicer than the alter­na­tives, they can­not cure chronic fatigue syn­drome or fibromyal­gia because they are not part of the cause.

While we’re at it, no, alien abduc­tions don’t cause FMS, either. I know you’re laugh­ing, but there really is site out there that makes such claims. No, I won’t link to it. It’s bad enough that it exists!

“Chronic Fatigue Syn­drome” is a totally inad­e­quate name for a dis­or­der whose suf­fer­ers expe­ri­ence far, far, more than a lit­tle tired­ness. That’s why we have a new and bet­ter name for CFS, as of Jan­u­ary 2007: ME/CFS, or myal­gic encephalopathy/chronic fatigue syn­drome. The dis­ease has been known as ME all along in the rest of the world, although some­times the acronym was used for myal­gic encephalomyelitis. Per­son­ally, I pre­ferred one of the other sug­ges­tions, chronic neu­roen­docrineim­mune dys­func­tion syn­drome (CNDS), but I wasn’t on the committee.

I would hap­pily rename fibromyal­gia “you don’t want to be me” or “betrayal by entire body, tak­ing your mind with it,” but I don’t think any­body is sug­gest­ing that it be renamed. The name just doesn’t seem ade­quate to its impact, though it’s a lit­tle bet­ter than some of the older names, like “rheumatism.”

To oth­ers who have said “pre­ven­tion is bet­ter than cure.” Well, yes, and “a stitch in time saves 9.” Yup. I’ve got plenty of apho­risms, too. Tell me, pray, how one “pre­vents” dis­or­ders whose ori­gin is unclear? As I said above, researchers have iden­ti­fied genetic anom­alies. We have fairly good evi­dence that fibromyal­gia, at least, has a genetic com­po­nent. We’ve got brain scans show­ing that fibromites’ brains react dif­fer­ently to painful stim­uli, and other tests show­ing that our spinal fluid has much higher lev­els of a neu­ropep­tide involved in trans­mit­ting pain impulses than non-fibromites.

With that in mind, how would you go about “pre­vent­ing” fibromyal­gia? Advis­ing us not to breed? Many of us have already done so by the time we’re diagnosed—and, of course, that can’t help us when we’ve already got the dis­ease. We can use our own diag­noses as warn­ings that our own chil­dren may have a sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to fibromyal­gia, but what then? Smother them in cot­ton bat­ting, to keep them from expe­ri­ence any stres­sors in life that might set off the FMS bomb in their genes?

Being fat doesn’t cause ME or FMS, either, although it’s com­mon to gain weight after devel­op­ing either dis­or­der. I don’t know any­one who is able to main­tain the level of activ­ity he or she did before falling ill, and many of the drugs used to treat the symp­toms of these dis­or­ders cause weight gain. Los­ing weight is even more dif­fi­cult for us than for other peo­ple. Telling us that we’d feel bet­ter if we lost weight is not help­ful in the least. I’ve never once heard of any­one who was “cured” of FMS or ME because he or she lost weight—and if it were hap­pen­ing, I would know it, because I pay a lot of atten­tion to these things.

Even if I thought weight loss offered a “cure,” or even ame­lio­ra­tion of symp­toms, I see no rea­son to dis­cuss drugs like Xeni­cal at any length. Any drug or pro­ce­dure promis­ing weight loss will has an easy time get­ting approved because of our society’s hatred of fat peo­ple. Fen-phen, any­one? “Oh, the drug will kill some patients, or leave them with per­ma­nent heart dam­age? Hell, it’s worth it if there’s a chance of los­ing weight!” The weight-lossself-hatred indus­try has more than enough money and power to lube their way past any flimsy lit­tle reg­u­la­tions stand­ing in their way.

Diet and sports and their rela­tion to weight are another thing all together, and beyond the scope of this blog. I rec­om­mend you to peruse the worlds of the delight­ful Sandy Szwarc over at Junk­food Sci­ence, who does cover that topic, fre­quently, thor­oughly, and well.

January 23, 2008  Tags: allergies, causes, CFIDS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, diet, exercise, fatigue, Fibromyalgia, FMS, genetic basis, health foods, ME/CFS, myalgic encephalopathy, neurological disorders, Pain, treatments, weight loss  Posted in: Blogroll  8 Comments

Working?

I’m work­ing on a new pod­cast episode. Really!

And I’d like very much to hear from you. Are you work­ing? Have you had to change any­thing about work since devel­op­ing a chronic ill­ness? Have any of you gone back to work after tak­ing some time off? Any­body will­ing to be interviewed?

Thanks!

January 22, 2008  Tags: disability, employment, hiatus, return to work, work, working  Posted in: disability, employment  4 Comments