WELCOME to The Ultimate Chronic Illness Resource Directory, your source on the Internet for everything about the latest news and views on chronic illnesses! The Ultimate Chronic Illness Resource Directory at chronic-illness.org is also the site you need if you are looking for alternative, chemical-free cooking, and cleaning methods. When we don't yet have that information here, we'll provide links to the best information sites available on the World Wild Web. We'll also throw in the occasional dose of humor.

Okay, so maybe we exaggerate a bit. But even with a staff of just "mostly me," you can be assured we're going to do our darndest to see that chronic-illness.org lives up to that goal. All articles on this site are either authored by a physician or other healthcare provider or reviewed by a member of our editorial board before being published on the site.

The way we look at it is that we're the small mom-and-pop operation trying to operate and compete in the big guys Target and CostCo environment. Only in this case, it'd probably be more accurate to say "in the Google and Yahoo! environment."

But, unlike the mom-and-pop operations trying to compete in brick-and-mortar stores, when we do offer something for sale, we can do so at the same prices the other big-guys sites can. Actually, in one way we can do so cheaper because those other sites are charging vendors money so you can have the "privilege" of seeing all of those annoying flashing animations and pop-up ads.

Our priority here isn't to build a site that inflates page views so keep the stockholders happy.

Our priority is to build a community of people looking for support on how best to cope with and find information about their chronic illnesses.

But thank goodness we don't have to do all of this alone. Years ago when this site first began and was hosted on ricehahn.com, "mostly me" was supplemented by help from the RJ Corradino; he helped verify the links and research the sites. He also gathered material for the MD, REFERENCE and OTHER CONDITIONS pages. (RJ passed away in 2000 from complications from MD. We still grieve that loss.) A special thanks also goes to Sheri L. Martin, RN, BSN, for her help in compiling the pages for the original Diabetes section at that time. Help now comes from Eric Ehlers and Troy More, who lend their technical assistance. David Hebert for the occasional article. And, last but far from least, from Bernie Standish for her help with the Forum.

While it is our goal to make these pages the most informative on the Web, we cannot make promises as to how often pages will be updated; we will do this as we find the time and energy. It will also be an ever-evolving process.

The chronic-illness.org crew

A special note from Pamela Rice Hahn:

These pages are my way of doing the research I need to do to learn more and better ways to cope with my own chronic illnesses and then share that information with you ... via the filter of my personal experiences*. My personal experiences is something that I ask each of you to keep in mind as you read my comments; none of us are alike so we suffer and cope in different ways. My way may not be the right way for you. But, with any luck, we'll all learn in this process.

I thank you for visiting this site. And remember. ...

There are links to other places, too, such as:

The companion site for my book The Unofficial Guide to Online Genealogy: GenealogyTips. (This book was originally published by the Dummies books publisher in 2001, which then morphed into Hungry Minds; I've lost track of who's the publisher now. This stuff changes every time I turn around, and I get dizzy easily enough as it is.)

My personal Web site, which has details about my other books published articles, and some personal pages.

I also maintain a humor archives and other pages of interest on Fawnn.com and have a Cooking With Pam Web site.

After rejections of such wonderful possible cookbook titles as THE M&Ms COOKBOOK: How To Color-Coordinate Your Meals To Match Your Dessert and Carryout-Calling Etiquette, I finally got to write my first cookbook title, Master the Grill The Lazy Way. (The book -- which sold out of its first printing and made its way onto some outdoor cooking bestseller lists! -- is out of print because of one of those Catch-22 terms of a publisher merger; it was later revamped and published as Lazy About Grilling: the feet up, hands down easiest ways to barbecue, only to get lost in the shuffle of that publisher merger. You can still read some of the recipes and fun stuff at the Lazy About Grilling Web site.

I've since published other books, worked as the About.com Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Fibromyalgia Guide from August 2004-September 2005, began revamping this site, and created the Writing Woes and Chronic Ilness Realities comic strips.

--Pamela Rice Hahn