The Seated View

This week, I’ll be participating in RABlog Week, posting on particular prompts that were decided by a community survey. Learn more about RABlog Week and how you can participate. You can also follow the #RABlog Week hashtag on Twitter. This year is my 50 th anniversary of living with RA. Well, technically juvenile idiopathic arthritis, but my experience of it has been close enough to RA, especially as an adult, that this is the name I use for what I have. Today’s prompt is about starting stories. I’ve told my story often, so I’m going to summarize it very briefly and then go off on a bit of a different interpretation. If you want to learn more about my journey with this illness, one of the best places to do so is my Live Bold feature on HealthCentral . I was four years old when I felt the first symptoms, my left ankle swelling hugely. I was nine when I got my diagnosis, 12 when a systemic flare almost killed me, and 16 when I got my hips replaced, enabling...

#RAblog is a seven day event from September 21-27, 2015. The brainchild of Rick Phillips, the goal of this week is to raise awareness about rheumatoid arthritis and build community. Up on over to the RADiabetes site to learn more about #RABlogWeek and find links to other participants. For Day 4 of #RABlog Week, we were asked to share 5 things we’ve learned from RA. Here are mine. Living with juvenile arthritis or, as I simply call it now (because it’s easier) RA, for 49 years has taught me endless lessons. Some of them good, some of them the kind that you’d rather live without. All of them have helped me grow. Crying doesn’t change anything . When I was 11 years old, I was admitted to a rehab hospital on the Danish coast in the hope that it would do something for my JA. I hated every minute of it. It was an awful place and I cried for three weeks. It got me no comfort from the staff, and my deep unhappiness did not factor into the decision about how long I was staying (th...

Image credit: dvarg Today is the 10 th anniversary of my first injection of a biologic. A t 3:35 PM, to be exact. Today is the 10 th anniversary of me getting a second chance, of being given the gift of getting back my life. Ten years ago, I thought I’d celebrated my last Christmas. I had nothing left — a severe RA flare had eaten everything: my strength, my ability, my social life, my energy, my hope. I felt burned to the ground, a pile of rubble and ashes. On January 7, 2005, the funding came through and I got my first shot of a biologic. I went home, took a nap, and woke up a different person . I still remember that feeling, although it is hard to describe. I remember waking up, knowing that the medication was working. Feeling somehow different, as if a few drops of energy had begun to trickle back in. As if the swelling and pain were infinitesimally reduced. It continued and gradually, I rose out of the ashes. What was not gradual, however, was my embrace of...