What You Need to Know About Seronegative Rheumatoid Arthritis
Up to 30% of people with RA don’t have a positive blood test. This has an impact on speed of diagnosis and effective treatment. My new article for HealthCentral looks at what you need to know about having seronegative RA, and includes some fantastic quotes from people who’ve experienced this: “Getting a diagnosis of rheumatoid…
How a Pain Specialist Can Help Treat Rheumatoid Arthritis Pain
Living with rheumatoid arthritis means facing many challenges, one of which is getting effective treatment for pain. My latest article for HealthCentral looks at how a pain specialist can help: “Treating rheumatoid arthritis (RA) doesn’t begin and stop with a rheumatologist. RA is a complex systemic condition that can benefit from a team approach. A…
Marijuana for Pain: Does It Work?
I never smoked marijuana as a teenager. No, that’s not entirely true. Once, I took one puff, hardly inhaled, and called it quits. Fast-forward four years or so. By this time, we’d moved to Canada, I was in university and we lived in a wonderful house with a backyard adjacent to a ravine. The guy…
The Path to better Treatment: 5 Tips to Get What You Need
“We have to do whatever we can to help our patients function.” – My rheumatologist Both my rheumatologist and my family doctor support my need for treatment that enables me to live my life. That includes prescribing opioids, steroid shots, or thinking outside the box to find solutions. I know that makes me a lucky…
Photo Friday: Orange
Earlier this week, I told you a bit about last Saturday, when I was “gifted” of bouquet of three calamities. But, as with so much of life, there was a balance. It was also a beautiful day of wandering around the city with my camera. When I looked through the shots, I realized that one…
How Michael Kuluva Raises Awareness About RA and Disability Through Fashion
I was really excited to speak with Michael Kuluva, creator of Tumbler and Tipsy, about how he raises awareness of rheumatoid arthritis through his fashion. He also showed us some examples from his 2019 Spring/Summer collection, just fresh off the runway at New York Fashion Week
They Come in Threes, Don’t They?
One Turns out that wasn’t allergies. I spent a fair bit of last week being convinced I had the worst allergy attack of my life, including a sudden and profound allergic response to someone cutting the grass in a park. Well, it all started with that weird woolly sensation in the back of my throat…
Life Philosophy on a Mug
I find inspiration in the weirdest places. A display in a card store, an ad on a billboard, the back of a cereal box, books (of course), tattoos, and the list goes on. Images, words, quotes that make me stop and think or lift my spirits. And sometimes, what I see becomes integrated in my…
Birthday Week: Waves, Geeks, A Few Atrocities, and an Unexpected Gift
Photo by DavidG It was the last week of what was supposed to have been a working month’s vacation. The month saw very little work — that bone crushing fatigue I experienced early in the year came back with a vengeance. I finally clued in that fighting it every day, trying to push through, and…