I built the tool I needed when I was too sick to search.

I'm Roi. I'm a writer, a chronic illness advocate, and someone who spent a significant chunk of his life navigating a body that refused to cooperate with the plans I had for it. I was bedridden. I was unheard. I was handed leaflets and sent home with no real answers.

What I needed — what I was desperately searching for — wasn't more clinical information. It was someone who had been through it. Someone who could tell me what it actually felt like, what had helped them, what hadn't, and that I wasn't imagining it.

That kind of knowledge exists. It lives in patient forums, in late-night Reddit threads, in whispered conversations in waiting rooms. But it's scattered, hard to find, and often buried under content that wasn't written for us.

"The most useful thing anyone ever told me about my condition didn't come from a doctor. It came from a stranger on the internet who had lived it."

Spoons is my attempt to make that knowledge easier to find — and easier to share. It's a search engine built on lived experience. Anonymous by default, because sometimes you need to ask things you can't put your name on. Spoon-aware, because some days the interface needs to meet you where you are.

It's named after Spoon Theory — Christine Miserandino's framework for explaining how people with chronic illness manage limited energy. If you haven't read it, it's worth your time.

I write about chronic illness, patient empowerment, and what it means to build a life inside a body that doesn't always cooperate. You can find that writing at roishternin.substack.com, and my podcast Chronically wherever you listen.

Spoons is built for you. For the person who is too tired to wade through Google. For the person who needs to know they're not alone at 2am. For the person who just got diagnosed and doesn't know where to start.

You're not imagining it. We believe you. Come in.