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 favorite coping strategy, it does absolutely nothing to deal with a very real phenomenon. When you live with rheumatoid arthritis, you have an increased risk of death. It’s called the ‘mortality gap’, and it refers to the lower life expectancy that historically has affected people who have RA.

That’s a really scary thing to read. Much of RA is already unnerving — inflammation, fatigue, pain, and the possibility of deformities in your joints. After living with this disease since I was four years old, I’d gotten used to that, though. But potentially dying because of it, and early? That would severely interfere with my plan to live to at least 100 years old."

You can read the rest of the post here.
  

Comments

Rick Phillips said…
What a terrific post. It is awesome that the on average the longer we take biologic's the lower our complication risk. You taught me something Lene.

10:02 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Farber’s Disease: Could Your Child’s Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Be Misdiagnosed?

Image
Joint inflammation or contractures. Nodules (small lumps under the skin or in other tissues). A weakened or hoarse voice. Children with these symptoms may have been diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) or other types of juvenile arthritis . But do they actually have JIA or do they have Farber’s disease? An equine digression When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. This is an adage in the medical world that encourages doctors to not wander off exploring rare and esoteric reasons for a patient’s symptoms. Because most of the time, that hoof beat of a rash likely isn’t the plague, the joint pain more likely a type of arthritis than the bends (especially if the person has never scuba dived) and you get the picture. But once in a while, it actually is a zebra. And even if it’s first identified as a horse, eventually, the stripes come through. It took five years of my parents running around to different doctors before one finally recognized that I had...
Read more

13 Things to Know for Rheumatoid Arthritis Newbies + Facebook Live

Image
Getting a diagnosis of any type of chronic illness can throw you for loop. There is so much to know and you have so little energy. My new slideshow for HealthCentral collects 13 things you need to know as an RA newbie : "Receiving a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a moment of strange duality. On one hand, you may be relieved to finally have answers for the symptoms you’ve been experiencing. On the other, it can be incredibly overwhelming to find out you have a chronic illness. Wrapping your head around all the new factors RA brings into your life is a long-term process. Here are some of the things you need to know." See the slideshow on HealthCentral . And in case you missed it, here is the Facebook Live I did yesterday talking about this topic:   
Read more