Sexual Side Effects of Rheumatoid Arthritis Meds
You take the medications to feel better, so you can live well with rheumatoid arthritis. And when you think of side effects, it’s mostly things like nausea and fatigue that come to mind. No one ever expects the medications to mess with your sex life. But they can. In my new article for HealthCentral, and…
#AskLene July 2018
This month on the #AskLene Facebook Live, I talked about disability benefits — what’s good about them, what isn’t, and what it takes to qualify — as well as what to do when people don’t believe you have a chronic illness.
CAPA Creates New Methotrexate Tool for People with Inflammatory Arthritis
Dawn Richards presenting the CAPA methotraxate tool at the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology “We all have a story about methotrexate,” said Dawn Richards, Vice President of the Canadian Arthritis Patient Alliance (CAPA) Steering Committee. This medication has been around for a long time and is considered the gold standard for treatment of inflammatory arthritis….
How I Cope with Taking Medication for My Chronic Conditions
Let’s get this out of the way first: no one likes taking medication. If my fairy godmother showed up in a sparkling red off the shoulder number (because my fairy godmother rocks) and offered to waive her magic wand over anything in my life, of course my first choice would be to magick away my…
Exercise with Severe RA: Starting the Day with a Dance
I’ve been thinking about exercise. Partly because it’s spring — well, currently waffling back and forth between spring and Springter in Toronto — and partly because I’ve had yet another health professional talk earnestly at me about moving my body. In response to which I pointed out, as I have so many of the times…
Let’s Talk: Arthritis and Mental Health and Well-Being
People who live with arthritis experience anxiety and depression at a higher rate than the general population.[1] I am one of those people, both in terms of the arthritis and the mental health issues. Over my 50-year “career” with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) I have spent a lot of time feeling depressed. Like the 30% of…
Hästens: The Best Sleep I’ve Ever Had
I have a new bed. I have never slept this well and it has reduced my chronic pain levels significantly. It is a blue checked Hästens bed. Earlier this year, I wrote about my quest for a new bed. To recap: every bed I found was too high, too hot, too smelly, or contained latex…
Getting Organized: The Desk
I am not known for having a pristine home. Clean, yes. Tidy? Not so much. And this has two causes. via GIPHY One, tidying up is not in my top priorities. It doesn’t really hold much interest for me and besides, I usually know exactly where things are in the piles. Once it’s cleaned up,…
Shortcuts, Traveling, and Loss
Alcatraz, 1992 At some point in the ICU, I had a transcendent experience. Buzzing with excitement, I waited for The Boy to arrive for his daily visit and then told him all about it. That as soon as I was better, the first major adventure we were going to have was to go to Giraffe…
I Have Been Nominated In the Health Influencer Awards!
I’m incredibly honoured to have been nominated in the Patient Advocate category of the Health Influencer Awards. I would greatly appreciate your voteif you like my work as an advocate and writer. The Patient Advocate category is for “Patients who have gone above and beyond to share their personal story, network and speak out to…
How I Cope with Mortality Risks of Rheumatoid Arthritis
My new post for Mango Health is about coping with the mortality risks of RA: “The first time I heard the term ‘mortality risks’ associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), I wanted to stick my head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. If I can’t see it, it isn’t happening. Right? Although repression is my…
Going to the Mattresses: My Quest for a New Bed to Help my Chronic Pain
I need a new bed. More specifically, I need a new mattress, and as my current bed frame is a double XL, and there isn’t a lot of choice in that category, I decided to go for a whole new bed. I had a couple of requirements: a double bed, no higher than 22 inches…