Happy Thanksgiving! I had a great Friendsgiving with a friend of over 20 years and somehow I was able to eat everything served—a feat I have not experienced in years. Well, today is “Black Friday” which makes me cringe as I type it but I know most of us, especially in the chronically ill community in the US, cannot afford. . .anything really these days. If you have to pay for many doctors and many meds out of pocket then you really can’t buy much outside of sales. One of my tricks is to put sales alerts on things I like on a site like Shopstyle and then just wait ages until they pop up there.

One thing I wish I could have told my loved ones these past few years is what I actually needed. It takes a lot of stuff to be chronically ill sadly and so the following is a wish list of my own favorites plus others people have written to me about. I should also emphasize that chronically ill people are also just people and so you can just buy them anything you would a healthy person. How many pill organizers can one human be gifted anyway?! (That’s a good gift actually though I personally hate them!) But in case you believe like I do that we need some other special items, here are 25 suggestions:

Cold Gel Pack—some people need heat, some need cold. For me cold proves more helpful for acute pain. I love these packs.

Infrared Heating Pad —for more chronic pain, heat helps me but I especially love infrared heat which somehow does not aggravate my POTS. This uses FIR (Far Infrared) technology which seems to be the best.

Red light therapy devices—Red light therapy is all the rage these days. They are often prohibitively expensive so I like this small portable model.

Beekeeper’s Naturals travel set—it’s not secret that bee products have been huge in my dealing with Lyme. I love this brand—I start my day with their honey that has propolis and pollen and royal jelly mixed in.

Blow-out membership—for years, when my hair was long, I could not wash it. I often could not stand in the shower long enough so blow-outs became my thing. Find a small business local to you to get a gift certificate from!

SoulCandy crystal kits—crystals can be divisive but I love my friend Sameer’s line here. I can’t say they will cure you, but he gifted me a detox kit and I swear it had some power I could not explain. Also, he hand-picks them all and they are just beautiful.

Sun Potion essentials kit—I love this brand though I can’t really afford them. But everyone loves them and I feel like their kits make stunning gifts for those who love natural medicine.

Quality bathrobe—gone are the days that my mom would buy me a bathrobe each Christmas. I hate buying my own so the idea of someone gifting me one is a dream.

Blueblocker glasses—believe the hype! It really helped for me when I had the worst insomnia to invest in some blue light blocking eyewear.

Lord Jones CBD Bath Salts—I saw Selma Blair talk about these on Instagram and I became obsessed. A lot of CBD products don’t work for me, but somehow these do and I don’t even love baths that much!

Quicksilver detox kits—this is one of the best brands for moldies and most cannot afford their stuff! But their kits are rumored to be the best and I have been really impressed with their products.

Weighted blanket—I dream of having a weighted blanket! These are supposed to be the best for anxiety and I love that this one is cooling because heat can be a real anxiety trigger for me.

Luxury slippers—everyone needs these! And no one wants to buy them!

Silver lozenges—I got hooked on these silver lozenges when I began suffering from really awful dry mouth. I take a ton of antihistamines for my MCAS so good lozenges are really important for me every day.

EMF-free air tube headphones—these were the best earphones I ever had (and lost!)—plus they are EMF-free. This company is just very good in general if you fear EMFs as I do!

Anti-radiation iPhone cases—see above but this is a must for those of us who crawl into bed with our phones on hand 24/7. Mine still looks like new and it’s been a year.

Reading pillow—I badly want one of these because I am sick of building shabby pillow forts to sit upright in bed.

Portable infrared sauna—Okay this one is REALLY expensive, but you can buy a 400 dollar one on Amazon that is not as fancy. The cheap one i have has been one of the top items for my healing. I use my sauna for 30 min each day and since I don’t exercise much this is the only way I can really sweat.

Portable air purifier—IQ Air makes the best air purifiers and this travel-sized “desk air purifier” is wonderful.

Luxury eye masks—I can’t sleep at all without an eye mask and I often just buy cheap ones, but the nice ones are really dreamy (no pun intended)

Local acupuncture session—no link here, but I would love the gift of a session or a series of acupuncture sessions at a local spot. I think this helps everyone with pain.

Berkey shower filter—okay, a shower filter is a weird gift, but again something people just forget to buy for themselves. This has been a huge game changer for me. I love Berkey products in general.

Chic compression socks—for anyone with POTS, this is a must. I used to wear them just on planes but now I wear them all the time and I am grateful there are cute options too now.

TENS unit—again a staple for pain. I always assumed these would be extremely expensive but I am amazed they are not.

Fancy dry shampoo—it is not easy to wash your hair when you are bedridden, so dry shampoo can be the best. If you are not chemically sensitive there are so many options, including very fancy ones like this one by Balmain!

I should mention I don’t own many of these (hint hint!) but over the years I have researched them all and I can stand by them. A lot of them have amazing sales going today too so check it out for that chronically ill loved one or yourself! :)

(Also none of this is sponsored! No one sent me free shit to make this post!)