About

Sick and Happy is a blog for people with chronic illness who are interested in optimizing their wellness and happiness.

Here you will find:

• A collection of articles focused on fitness and wellness written by a physician-turned-wellness coach who understands chronic disease from both a professional and personal vantage point.
• New content added regularly including instructional exercise articles, product and book reviews, articles mining the popular new field of positive psychology to increase happiness, musings about exciting research in cystic fibrosis and probably occasional rants.
• Who is Julie Desch?

The content appearing on Sick and Happy is produced by me, Julie Desch, a 50-year-old retired pathologist with cystic fibrosis.  My professional career began at Stanford Medical School, where I spent 10 years in medical training.  While at Stanford, I also worked in the Stanford Cystic Fibrosis Research Laboratory, trying to better understand the disease that would come to dominate my life.  I emerged from the “Farm” as a specialist in surgical pathology with sub-specialty Board certification in Dermatopathology.  Isn’t it funny that I became an expert in how the body fails?

When the need for more intensive self-care necessitated retirement five years later, I expanded my interest in “complementary medicine” by learning all she could about fitness and holistic wellness, becoming certified as a personal trainer, and eventually licensed and certified as a “wellness coach.”  My mission now is to coach wellness to those with chronic illness, predominately CF. Julie founded New Day Wellness, a non-profit corporation.  She now coaches and writes for several publications.

For a rather detail autobiographical story, click here. You may want some popcorn.