Comments on: How To Be Sick: Discussion 1

By: Isabelle

Isabelle — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:37:36 +0000

Would it be because of the bugs one comes into contact with when one is in the classroom with a bunch of children and being on immunosuppressant meds makes one particularly vulnerable to those bugs?

I am sorry you face this Joan but I have always said I’d trade a shorter quality life for a longer one wherein I was not happy. In deciding to try the anti-TNF meds I had to reach this conclusion. Otherwise I couldn’t bring myself to try them with all the nasty side effects they list.

Best wishes to you.

By: Isabelle

Isabelle — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:05:40 +0000

Hi Thrive with RA

Do you still suffer from the flu like symptoms – nausea dizziness – along with the RA? Reading the stories here it seems like 2 others besides me have experienced the ongoing flu-like illness along with the arthritis. My docs had told this wasn’t part of RA but am now wondering if it is for some of us?

Thanks for sharing.

By: Isabelle

Isabelle — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:54:20 +0000

My ‘Paris’ was Tokyo. I went for work in 2002 and was visiting a university there and felt tired during the day – thought it was just jet lag. By the time I made it back to my hotel that evening I had terrible vertigo and an awful headache. An awful experience when one is at a busy subway station in Tokyo at the height of rush hour. I had to hold on to the wall to make it back to my hotel. I thought I had a bad flu and managed to drag myself thru my work days sleeping for 12 h each nite. I felt better the day I left Tokyo and then got sick again on the flights back. I tried going back to work and could not – doc kept saying I had the flu. On and on went the visits to the doctors specialists naturopaths etc. etc. It seems the meds I was taking for the RA for 3 years previously had resulted in me coming down with some virus or something that my body could not fight. I managed to drag myself into work p/t for a few years feeling so sick I would collapse each day after getting home and then finally having to face quitting work as it was just making me worse. I am still struggling with the many losses this situation has brought me. Thanks for writing this book Toni. It helps so much to know that what I have experienced is real – that it is not in my head and that it’s not that I am just not trying hard enough. It’s so easy to blame ourselves in all of this and not wonder what we did wrong what we could have done differently etc. I look forward to trying to implement some of these techniques into my own life to try and handle this situation better. Thanks for initiating this discussion RAGuy.

By: Isabelle

Isabelle — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:13:20 +0000

That’s a good idea RA Guy. I just find it hard to put it into practice. On days I feel good, I fly around getting stuff done as it’s rare I have good days. Then I pay for it later. I never seem to learn.

By: Christina

Christina — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:04:02 +0000

I too love the Rule of Thirds… it just makes it sound cooler somehow, this rationing of energy. It’s amazing how much I’ve had to downsize my activity level. These days I accomplish in an entire day, if I’m lucky, what I used to do on the fly outside of a full work day. Sometimes the thirds get divided up even more. I try not to get disappointed and just feel satisfied with what I managed to do. A big change for someone who used to be so outcome-oriented. Or maybe I still am outcome oriented, just on a smaller scale…