She's the Carrie Bradshaw of chronic illness

Blogger-author Laurie Edwards has advice for sick 20- and 30-somethings

Laurie Edwards is the author of "Life Disrupted: Getting Real About Chronic Illness in Your Twenties and Thirties." (MATTHEW J. LEE/GLOBE STAFF)

In her confessional writing, blond and blue-eyed freelancer Laurie Edwards, 28, parses the dilemmas typical of "Sex and the City" - nabbing her dream guy, cranking out stories on deadline, rounding the bars with her girl-friends, and, naturally, deciding on the right shoes.

Her musings, however, are complicated by what she calls "the occupational hazards of being me."

How do you attract a mate when your romantic profile includes wheezy lungs and flagging muscles? How do you build a career when your bones are so weakened by steroids you once broke a finger typing? And, on a simpler level, where is the miracle makeup that will cover the bright red flush induced by medication?

At the height of life, Edwards juggles four chronic illnesses: thyroid disease, gluten intolerance, bronchial inflammation, and PCD (primary ciliary dyskinesia), a rare genetic disorder that bogs her lungs with mucus. Unwilling to surrender her 20s to invalidism, Edwards advises other young adults in her blog, A Chronic Dose, and now her debut book, "Life Disrupted: Getting Real About Chronic Illness in Your Twenties and Thirties," on how to launch relationships, a career, and a sense of self despite incurable, often invisible, disease.

"If you're in your mid-20s, you're having all this angst over what you want to be and what you want to do with your life. I mean, there's a reason there's a quarter-life crisis, right?" said Edwards, of Newton Heights, who is also a writing instructor at Northeastern University. "You don't want to let illness define you."

It's a problem facing more people than ever, as medical advances help chronically ill children live longer lives. Since 1980, the life expectancy of cystic fibrosis patients, for example, has jumped from 18 to 37. Yet few studies examine coping strategies for young adults.

Edwards is helping fill the void as the Carrie Bradshaw of chronic illness. She has learned how many martinis she can handle without riling her medications, and when to suck up the pain of tendinitis and inflamed arches for the sake of stylish heels.

But these nuances mask the deeper issue: how to relate to girlfriends for whom sickness is merely the occasional hangover. Edwards leans on humor.

"My friends and I refer to my nebulizer and oxygen face mask in the hospital as the 'Super Bong,' and to them it is no longer intimidating," Edwards writes in her book. "The fall after college graduation, when I didn't feel well enough to go out on weekends for three months, we referred to it as my Boo Radley phase."

The breezy tone, however, is hard won.

"Laurie's a pit bull," said her father, Mike Mingolelli, 60. "As a kid, she wanted to play soccer, but couldn't run around because of her breathing. So she played goalie. She broke several bones when the ball hit her hard. We forced her to stop; she was so upset." She turned to basketball instead, practicing all summer in two casts. "The first day back to basketball practice, the coach threw her the ball, broke two of her fingers," he said.

College was an opportunity to evade her parents' protection. She tried desperately to shed her childhood persona in Framingham as the "sick girl" by playing the overachiever. In addition to classes, she worked 35 hours a week for the school newspaper, snatching as little as three hours of sleep.

In turn, she found herself hospitalized more than ever, while confronting the unique challenges of being both young and sick. Because she often looked healthy on the outside, fighting infections within, others didn't understand when she seemed slow or tired.

"When you're healthy at 25, you can't imagine walking a block or two and having to stop," said Jenni Prokopy, a fellow blogger on chronic illness. "I know 70-year-olds who can't imagine that."

Doctors even suggested some of Edwards's problems were psychological. Understandably, she hesitated to make herself vulnerable in the dating game.

"A friend once said, 'Your life is really stressing me out. I can't do this.' It was enough to make me think that if this person can't handle me, then why would somebody else?" she said.

But two days after yet another hospitalization, her arms still flush with IV bruises, she found him. In her husband, John Edwards, she met a man eager to decipher the colors of her phlegm, and kiss around a GI tube plunged down her nose.

"I decided early on, I wasn't going to let her health scare me off," he said.

That was the honeymoon phase; marriage presented new challenges. A romantic evening can by derailed by attacks of chest pain or vomiting. Chores can't be evenly split. And the joint burden of college loans and house payments is compounded by overwhelming healthcare costs, plus lost wages and nonrefundable tickets when an illness flares.

But marriage also helped Edwards see that every obstinate decision that hurt her health, hurt him too. It was a growing-up moment: instead of punishing the sick girl within, she struck a balance, found flexibility in freelancing, and for the first time, started writing publicly about her own struggles and successes.

Among her healthy peers who worry over flaky friends and commitment-phobic boyfriends, Edwards has even discovered an edge.

"I think illness is a great litmus test," she said. "If you have relationships that survive this stuff, then those are the relationships you'll keep forever."