Dental Adventures with RA: In Which I Scare a Dentist
Updated June 11, 2022 I’m beginning to see why people get their teeth yanked. It all started late one evening when I cracked a molar eating Oatmeal Squares. I managed to get squeezed in to see my dentist the next day and was told it either should be extracted or I needed a root canal…
Me & My Shadow
I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. Well, now they call it Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis, but a rose by any other name is still a pain in the arse. I have lived with RA for over four decades and there are times when I’ve thought about how even really bad…
Brave New World
I was four when I had the first symptoms of Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (JRA). I was also four years old when I was admitted to hospital and placed in isolation for three weeks with a suspicion of rheumatic fever. I don’t remember much about that hospital stay, except being alone in a bed with white…
Before and After and Before
Two pieces of information before I get going. First, the contest to win one of two 2011 The Seated View calendars is open until 6 PM EST on Sunday. And second, if you live in the Toronto and vicinity area, there’s a really interesting public forum on Thursday, November 25 called The Most Exciting Time…
Like Snow: 13 New Names for Different Types of Pain
Updated November 21, 2021 Most people have an only occasional experience with pain and as the language of a culture is shaped by the majority experience, our world lacks descriptors of pain beyond the basic – burning, stabbing and not much else. Those of us who live with chronic pain know that it is a multifaceted creature. Legend…
Like Me: Finding My RA Community and Why It Matters
Updated November 12, 2022. Being different is both external and internal. Being the only person who looks a certain way set you apart in a group, designates you as Other. Even when the members of the group are your friends, there is something that makes you feel set apart. Finding your community, the people who…
Pain Thresholds, Gender and More Ranting
A couple of weeks ago, in response to my rant about the medical literature talking about the alleged hyperalgesia (i.e., lower pain thresholds) in people living with RA, Carrie (sorry – forgot the link) asked a very good question. Namely whether it wasn’t a good thing to identify that RA appeared to lower your pain…
Attempting Maturity
After a couple months of doing really, really well, to the point where taking painkillers made me stoned because they didn’t have any pain to deal with (and hence, I had a lovely, yet very freaky period of time in which I took hardly any – freaky because they’re as much part of my daily…
You Gotta Have Faith
The holiday ponderings proliferate, not just here, but in my latest post on HealthCentral, too: “Midwinter is upon us and with it, the New Year and celebrations of the coming of the light. We sing and set flame to candles in the dark, symbolizing our faith in goodness and our hope for tomorrow. We know…
Effortless: What Walking Looks Like to Someone Who Can’t Walk
I was 14 the last time I walked on my own steam and I did so with crutches and what felt like knives slicing through my joints at every step. Years of untreated juvenile arthritis had ravaged my body. Thirty years later, walking no longer makes sense to me – I have no muscle memory…
Calamity Jane Not So Calamitous: My Ongoing Biologics Miracle
Updated May 5, 2021 When your life seems out-of-control, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and every day disasters combining to create chaos, sometimes all it takes is one moment to bring you out of it. A brief synopsis: it started with my phone crapping out, bringing with it a sort of domino effect of calamities worthy of…
Everything
Updated June 21, 2020 In December of 2004, I looked into the abyss and the abyss looked back. It’s hard to write about this — doing so with any emotional truth means going back to a place I’d rather never feel again — but there’s something I’ve wanted to say for a long time and…