The Seated View

Pain takes up a lot of room in your head . I will forever be grateful to the social worker from The Arthritis Society who told me that at a time when I thought I was losing my mind. I wasn’t. I was just having a lot of pain and it messed with my ability to focus and remember. I’ve had a little visit back in that place for a while. The last time I took my trusty biologic was just after Christmas and then croup happened . Then there was a month of working on healing my voice and by the end of January, my SI joints were starting to get unhappy. Earlier this month, I started back with a smaller dose, but left over side effects from four weeks of prednisone made my biologic side effects go insane — GERD and a hysterical hiatal hernia that made it feel as if I was having a heart attack. So we backed off a bit on Humira. And then came the Fibro flare. I couldn’t quite figure out if it was a genuine Fibro flare or it was a Fibro flare triggered by encroaching RA, but it d...

Most of the time, what I do involves sitting alone in front of my computer and writing down my thoughts, then posting them somewhere and and you read them and sometimes leave a comment. I like this. It suits my introverted nature, yet at the same time it is a two-way conversation. But one should stretch, no? Get out of the comfort zone, do something new and hopefully exciting. Several months ago, the lovely Kirsten Schultz interviewed me for the ChronicSex podcast and my episode it live ! In it, we talk about arthritis and sex, the lack of guidance from medical professionals about what to do and what to avoid, the awkwardness of asking for advice about sex, that little bit about politics, and there's a whole lot of laughing It was a terrific experience — Kirsten and I clicked on lying quite a while ago, met in person in Toronto last year and that confirmed the click. We talked for over an hour for the podcast and it went by in no time . You can find the ChronicSex podca...

Chronic illness can seriously mess with your body image, leaving you feeling disconnected and far from attractive. In my new post for Mango Health I look at ways to get back to feeling bodacious : "Where did the vibrant old you go? The person who felt at home in her own skin, who laughed and danced and took initiative? Living with a chronic illness is like living with a voracious monster that eats everything in sight: your energy, physical ability, social life, self-worth. And in some ways most devastating of all, your belief in your own attractiveness. But just as chronic illness can take, it can also give you a unique opportunity to rebuild. To accept and love yourself even more than you did before and to become fully realized as a strong, confident person. Here are a few ways you can become bodacious. Save your sweats Ah, sweats. They have the comfort of pyjamas and let you leave the house without looking entirely indecent. But they also make you feel invisib...

My mother has abandoned me.  Last night, she notified me that she had no intention of watching the Academy Awards with me on Sunday. And I don’t really blame her, because let’s face it, the Oscars are usually deadly dull. What makes it fun is watching it with someone and sharing snarky/admiring comments about the clothes, the speeches, and the presenters. Every now and again, they do something that livens things up. And then they go back to the same old thing. Take last year. There were one, maybe two of the major awards at the very beginning, followed by two hours of interminable dullness, and then they rushed the rest of the major rewards into the last 20 minutes. Who was responsible for that abomination? Yet I watch every year in the hope of something unique, entertaining happening, and of course of my favourite movies winning. To that end, I spend some time watching all the Best Movie nominees before the big night. Oddly enough, I also develop opinions abou...

I have battled nausea for as long as I've had RA, so why not write what you know? My new post for HealthCentral looks at how to cope with nausea related to chronic illness : "Nausea is a particularly nasty symptom. Your stomach’s on a rollercoaster and you’re sure you’re going to throw up. It can occur as a precursor to vomiting, or on its own. Generally, it can happen when you have stomach flu, motion sickness, or are pregnant. But for people with chronic illness, it may be part of their every day." See the rest of the slideshow with lots of tips on how to deal with nausea on HealthCentral.