Not Getting It
I used to be involved in organizing disability awareness days, both in university and later on a larger scale, but these days, I have conflicted feelings about them. With the benefit of hindsight, it became possible to see that too often, such days are “Trot out the Cripples Day” and after it’s all over, people/the…
Pass the Gravol
Last week, when I made a few notes for a post about the new season of Survivor, the document was saved as “Same Old Thing, Yet Highly Entertaining.” For those of you who aren’t interested in reality TV, stick around, because it will evolve into something entirely different. This season does look like it’s going…
Telling It Like It Is: Pain Awareness and Rheumatoid Arthritis
September’s National Pain Awareness Month in the US and I got on the barricades on MyRACentral… “‘Are you in pain right now?’ ‘Yes. I am always in pain.’ I was talking to someone about RA and when she asked me this question, I felt a strange inner shift. It took me a while – several…
Drugs and Bitterness
It’s been a bit of a summer. Not weatherwise – it was gorgeous – but in terms of my pain and injury levels. The right shoulder has been bitchy for months and when it finally started simmering down just a little bit after the steroid shot about a month ago, the left one took up…
Blocked
I don’t normally do this. I may hold forth about access and barriers to accessibility, but I don’t normally take on specific individuals or businesses in my neighborhood (except for Buskerfest because they deserve it). However, one of the big grocery stores in my neighborhood has recently done their best to demonstrate that they don’t…
Fall Migration
The monarchs left yesterday. I’ve been trying to pretend it isn’t happening. The cold that came on the Labour Day weekend, temps dropping from hot to cool between Friday and Saturday and staying around can no longer be said to be an aberration, just a fresh interlude between heatwaves. My feet have been cool for…
Ironies
This was the plan: on Saturday, September 11, a small church in Florida (very ironically called the Dove World Outreach Center) would commemorate the tragedy of 9/11 by burning copies of the Qur’an. Despite this church only having 50 members, the issue took over the media, as such a hateful act naturally should, people from…
Rheumatoid Arthritis, Pregnancy & Parenthood
Not having wee ones of my own, I had no idea. I received information about a new book dealing with pregnancy when you have RA and it looked like something we should review for MyRACentral. I interviewed the author – a lovely woman named Suzie from Perth, Australia – and found out that there is…
Epiphanies
It all started last Thursday morning as I was making my way to the grocery store after having kicked in 30 minutes on work. I’m making a mental list of what I’m going to do after I’ve been shopping, actually keeping it fairly reasonable, trying to take it easy on my shoulder. As I get…