From November of last year, until around the beginning of this current month, Rheumatoid Arthritis Guy has basically been in one big flare. The most challenging periods, those times when the extreme pain and stiffness could be measured in weeks and not in months, still stand out clearly in my mind: January, March, and July.
While [...]
A little over a week ago, I not only found myself in the middle of a flare, but I also found myself quite surprised with the manner in which I reacted to this flare. Over the past couple of years, I’ve tried really hard to make each new flare a learning moment…an opportunity to put [...]
Page 5 from My Book About Me by Me, Myself, and Dr. Seuss
proudly filled out when I was seven years old!
The night before last, my right hand flared like it has never done before. I woke up in the middle of the night, trying to figure out where the excruciating pain was coming from. As [...]
Quite often, the seriousness of my situation can be read on the faces of the people who are around me. Some of these people I know well, and others are complete strangers. I don’t necessarily mind these looks, and it’s not that they make me feel uncomfortable. But, I do sometimes think that I would [...]
“One – you are not alone.
Two – learning to live with pain that will not easily abate or go away is possible.
Tens if not hundreds of thousands of people have discovered that living with pain is a process. A minuet of sorts, maybe not to the tune you would have chosen if you were entirely [...]
In an email that I received the other day, a reader asked me if I ever feel like a burden to those people who are around me. When I stopped to ask myself this question, my answer was an immediate “no”. It’s sort of funny in a way, though, because the last few times that [...]
When you live with a chronic illness like rheumatoid arthritis, going to all of your different health care appointments can easily feel like a full time job. And to make the situation even more complicated, everything is usually in a different place. You have to go one place to see your rheumatologist, another place to [...]
A couple of days ago, I told my physical therapist that my condition had to get better the following day, because if it got any worse I didn’t know how I was going to be able to handle things. As soon as the words left my mouth, panic filled my mind. There was a real [...]
