The Seated View

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...

Do you know what a life lived with chronic illness is like? If you have a chronic illness, how much do you share and how much do you hide? Today was supposed to be a writing-book day. I'm so bone tired, I can't focus. Taken me 4 hours to write 500 words #chroniclife — Lene Andersen (@TheSeatedView) February 2, 2015 Last week, my friend Britt (a.k.a. Hurt Blogger) did an experiment and a whole lot of people, including myself, joined her. In an effort to show the unvarnished truth about living with chronic illness, Britt committed to 48 hours of tweeting about hers with some specific parameters . I got started a bit late and had to quit early, but did my best to tweet every time my variety of chronic illnesses made themselves noticed . I wasn’t the only one who joined in — you can see all the others in Britt’s Chronic Life Twitter list or search for #ChronicLife. It also spawned a spinoff about parenting with chronic illness. Do a search for #ChronicMom to...

I had forgotten about acidophilus. But I should start at the beginning. Which was my not-really heart attack in July , caused by an extra special flaring of GERD. Several factors contributed to this, including stress and the best gingersnaps I’ve ever had (and will now never have again) among them. The chief trigger, though, appeared to be my body developing an intolerance to meloxicam. This was not good news, as next to Vioxx, meloxicam is the most effective NSAID I’ve used in a very long time. Not only did the deal with pain related to 40+ years of RA damage, but it also had a good effect on my Fibro. I tried to do without an anti-inflammatory for a while, but it very quickly became obvious that this was a Very Bad Idea indeed. So, now what? Due to a previously developed intolerance, I can’t take anything that ends in -profen, excluding an entire subclass of NSAIDs. So I tried naproxen. Which is a good anti-inflammatory, but it burns the crap out of your stom...

Photo by David Govoni Sometimes, RA doesn’t just take. Sometimes, RA gives. When I still lived with my parents, I was in charge of pies. I'd found the perfect recipe for the crust and loved experimenting with different fillings. Our kitchen wasn't very wheelchair accessible, so my mother would place the ingredients and tools on the dining room table and I'd get to work. I love the feel of flour between my fingers — the cool softness of it, the way it packs into smooth shapes that fall apart with the slightest touch. After adding slices of butter, I'd mix it into the flour with a pastry cutter until it was a pile of pea-sized pellets and then get my hands in the bowl to smush them together into a ball of dough. You know the rest: rolling the dough into a large circle, carefully adding it to the pie pan, fluting the edges and adding the filling. Shortly thereafter, the delicious smell of baking pie would waft through the house. I grew up in a baking househ...

People with RA lie all the time . How are you?   Fine. You? How’s the pain today? Not bad. Are you worried? Not at all. I’m sure everything will be OK.   It’s a necessity of life with this damn disease. If you're honest, not only will your friends and family start avoiding you, but you'll start to bore yourself, too. There's only so much unrelenting crap anyone can deal with before it gets old and miserable and you want to run screaming for the hills. But when you live inside the crap, there's no way to run. And so you lie. You lie to the people you love most because seeing the worry in their eyes makes you want to protect them. You lie to acquaintances because it takes a certain level of intimacy to talk about the true impact of your RA on your life. You lie to the clerk at the grocery store because she doesn't really want to know how you are while cashing out your orange juice, crackers and toilet paper. You lie to your doctor, tel...