The Best Thing You Can Say or Do When Someone’s in Pain
Living with chronic pain is incredibly difficult. It’s invisible, which means that in order to be understood, you have to tell people about it and that’s when you hit another barrier. How do you put into words something that is pure sensation and unlike anything the average person has experienced? But on the other side…
Announcing #ChronicJourneys: My New Talk Show
Getting to know others and hearing their stories is one of my favourite things, ever. There are so many fascinating people who have found ways to live with and around rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and other types of chronic illness and I want to talk to all of them! About how they manage their condition, but…
Is it OK to Dump Someone Because of Their Medical Condition? Why the New York Times Got It Wrong (and It’s Not What You Think)
“I just can’t handle it.” I’d bet the majority of people who have a chronic illness or disability have had that conversation when dating. That is, if you’re lucky. There are also the infinite number of times when you’re just ghosted — the person just disappears as if exorcised from your life. Earlier this week,…
Deciding who lives and who dies – the #onpoli podcast
As someone who lives with multiple chronic illnesses and disability, news about triage protocols excluding people like me is both worrisome and infuriating. I recently appeared on the TV Ontario #onpoli podcast to talk about it. Listen to the episode on deciding who lives and who dies on TVO.
RA and COVID-19: Can We Go Back to Normal?
In the past week, some countries have started to relax COVID-19 restrictions and there is increasing talk about loosening things up. They call it deconfinement, which sounds oddly benign, like a Victorian lady starting to visit acquaintances for tea again after having produced the spare to the heir. But it’s not benign. I have rheumatoid…
COVID-19 and RA: What to Pack in Your Hospital Go-Bag
Living in the middle of a pandemic while being high risk is the most scared many of us have ever been. When you have rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and are taking an immunosuppressant medication, there is a double whammy of risk. We have to consider what might happen if we need to go to the hospital…
I Tried Light Therapy for Seasonal Affective Disorder
It arrived like clockwork the second week of February. I’ve had Seasonal Affective Disorder for as long as I can remember, as do several other people in my family. This year’s was a humdinger. I started isolating (remember this was before COVID-19), the world lost its colours, I got really sad, and writing became extremely…
Answered: Your Questions About Chronic Illness and COVID-19
Updated March 17, 2020 If you are a member of a vulnerable population, what you need to do and what you need to worry about in relation coronavirus and COVID-19 (the illness you get from coronavirus) may be entirely different than what’s general available. Finding the answers isn’t always easy. I asked my readers to…
Boundaries Start with U: Protecting Your Health with RA
It was my nap that taught me about boundaries and my role in maintaining them. Years ago, my rheumatoid arthritis (RA) progressed to the point that I needed a daily rest to manage fatigue and pain. And that’s when I banged hard up against other people’s preconceptions. “It must be wonderful to have a nap…
Chronic Illness Doesn’t Mean You Don’t Contribute
I can’t work, so I feel like a deadweight in my marriage. We used to do active things together and now we can’t. I worry that it’ll end our relationship. I see these comments all the time as I talk to others in the chronic illness community. When you can no longer do everything you…
9 Quotes That Inspire Me When the Struggle Gets Too Real
We all have when you wake up to discover that everything has chosen this exact moment to fall apart: your chronic illness has flared, your pain is out of control, the cat puked in your shoes, and brain fog is making it impossible to think. For instance. And sometimes, we have several days like that…
Thoughts on Guilt and Rheumatoid Arthritis
Guilt and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) go hand-in-hand. It goes something like this: You made plans. Sometimes big plans, sometimes small. Then you wake up to a day when your RA has decided to be extra — extra painful, extra flare-y, extra getting in the way of your life — and there’s only one thing to…