The Seated View

In the fall of last year, Laurie Proulx from the Canadian Arthritis Patient Alliance (CAPA) wrote a guest post for The Seated View about their new project on pregnancy and parenting with arthritis , of which she is the lead. She introduced the survey and asked my readers to help provide information on these topics. Today, Laurie is back with the result of the survey. Take it away, Laurie!  Laurie with her children I have lived with Rheumatoid Arthritis since I was 14 years old so I’m a veteran of this disease at the age of 39. It greatly affected my life in so many ways – from participating in school/university, socializing and even deterred me from a career in piano/music since the RA affected my hands so significantly. I soon learned to advocate for myself as a patient to ensure I received the best care. I quickly learned that if I didn’t manage the disease, it would manage me. Through this personal advocacy, I came across the Arthritis Patient Charter . It sparked someth

  With spending so little time with our rheumatologists, we often don't get an opportunity to ask questions and that can create a lot of fear around treatment. My new post for HealthCentral clarifies the options so you can get more specific in the questions you ask. And that will help you make better decisions about treatment: "Your rheumatologist has just rattled off at the names of a number of medications. All these multisyllabic words sound like a foreign language -- how will you know what is the best treatment option for you? Let’s demystify RA meds, so you can make better decisions." You can read the rest of the post on RA treatment options on the HealthCentral RA page.

Starting today off with a small poem: The smell of burning insulation Smoke rising from my wheelchair (I’m okay) But I should start at the beginning. Day 1: In which my wheelchair develops a whistle Sunday afternoon as I was about to nap, I noticed a high pitched whine coming from somewhere. At first, I thought a child in one of the surrounding apartments have gotten some sort of irritating little flute thing, but then it continued longer than anyone but a pearl diver could have breath for. Weird. It eventually stopped and when I got up, it was gone. Later in the evening, I noticed the whine was coming from my joystick when I turned off the power. This has never happened before, so I promptly emailed Dave the Wonder Repair Tech. (Expositional aside: Dave very recently started his own business in partnership with Paul the Equally Wonder Repair Tech. Both of them wanted to work in a way that focused on excellence in customer service and recognizing that tim