The Seated View

Living with Rheumatic Diseases (Real Life Diaries) is a terrific new book put together by some wonderful people from the community. Brenda L. Kleinsasser kindly agreed to write a guest post for The Seated View about the book and how it came to be. At the beginning of this year, a group of writers began a special journey. Real Life Diaries: Living with Rheumatic Diseases, a book project, that would prove to become such a rewarding experience, for all who were involved.  Of special note, all the writers have special connections to each other. We have become a family in the sense, that we all were sharing about our respective journeys of living with rheumatic or other autoimmune diseases.  What was great about this whole book project, is that I was connected with many of the writers, through the various groups that I have been involved with through the Global Healthy Living Foundation aka CreakyJoints. Some of the writers came on board after sharing about t...

So I did mention the thing about playing catch up, didn't I? That includes a post that I'm particularly fond of. One of the things that's a big struggle when you get diagnosed with a chronic illness is getting used to taking medication : "Getting diagnosed with a chronic condition often means getting one or more prescriptions for medication. Whereas the diagnosis may have given you a sense of relief to have some answers, most of us reflexively balk at the thought of taking medication for the rest of our lives. We still want to see ourselves as healthy, and taking medication doesn’t seem like something “healthy” people do. How I learned to (almost) love my meds I’ve had severe juvenile idiopathic arthritis since I was four years old. I grew up at a time when there were no treatments for this condition. It’s why I started using a power wheelchair as a teenager. You’d think this would automatically make me pro-medication, but that wasn’t the case. I’ve d...

I've been running so fast this week that it's been hard to catch up, so you get links to two new articles instead of just one today. Both show different aspects of channeling your inner fierceness to live with RA. In the first article, I talk about how we have a tendency to compare ourselves to others . It does no one any good, so I have a couple of suggestions on what we can do instead: "We learn to compete almost from the very start of our lives. Before we understand words, our parents are comparing us (usually favorably) with other babies. And then we grow and learn to compete ourselves. The games we learn to play have a winner and a loser and we learn about status, and the many factors that affect what is desirable and what isn’t. It’s no wonder that we internalize a tendency to compare ourselves against others so thoroughly that it becomes instinctive. And it’s not healthy. It is especially not healthy when you live with rheumatoid arthr...

I used to live out by the Toronto Zoo — well, not around the corner, but a fairly short drive away. We’d go a fair bit and I was even a member for a few years. Then I moved downtown and my focus changed. It would be a long drive out there, anyway, and there were so many interesting things to discover in the urban part of the city. As I’ve started to get stronger again after last year’s hospitalization, we’ve been looking to range further afield. And I started having a hankering to explore the Zoo again. So we went. This was fully knowing that it would flatten me for several days, but it’s probably not a surprise if I say that it was absolutely worth it. Toronto’s had pandas for a visit for the last few years and they had cubs. By now indistinguishable from the adults, but four pandas is quite something. They moved to Calgary next year, and then I assume back to China. What I need to know is that as the cubs were born in Canada, doesn’t that make them Canadian citizens?...

Photo by David Govoni It was Scatterlings that hooked me. I was in first year university at the U of T Scarborough campus, moving from one class to another, when I first heard the unmistakable joyful beat of a Johnny Clegg song, this one from his first group Juluka. Fairly soon after that, I bought the album. Campus radio was a great place to get exposed to all kinds of different music and it introduced me to what became known as World Music, one of my favourite genres. It tapped me into a music scene I’d otherwise not be aware of and I’m pretty sure this was also where I heard about Juluka coming to Toronto. I promptly got tickets to that concert at Massey Hall. It was also the first time I asked a boy out. The date part was decidedly uninspired, but the music lit a fire in me. That evening in 1983 was the start of a (so far) 34 year love affair with Johnny Clegg’s music. It started with Juluka — I have all their albums, even the very early ones that a...