Posts Tagged ‘Living with chronic illness like RA’
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I Want My Life Back
RA can hurt so bad that even tough guys cry. Lately, I’ve cried for a different reason. I want my life back so much. I want to run on the beach, but I stumble running to the bathroom. I want to hold a tennis racquet, but most days can’t hold a TV remote properly. Want [...]
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Without e-Patient Input, an ER Experience Can Be Empty
Things that patients know about their health and the wealth of information they find online make input from patients valuable and meaningful. These patients are called e-patients. An e-patient acronym: Expand Participation by Allowing The Input of Evidence Not in Textbooks Hopefully, you didn’t miss the exciting news for rheumatology e-patients acknowledging that by “pooling [...]
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Not a Real RA Patient
I always had a silly super-hero complex. I thought that I could do anything if I tried hard enough or stayed up late enough. Add to that endless optimism and a belief that God will always make everything turn out right. There’s this tendency to see life as a maze with many options. Never give [...]
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Airport, Storms, and DMV: April Fool’s!
April Fool’s Day held a surprise party by coming one day early this year for Katie Beth and me. We both fell asleep on our laptops last night without getting any work done. This morning, I see that before she fell asleep, she posted her Facebook status: “This day was UNREAL. Somebody wake me up. I [...]
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3 Questions & 3 Answers about Guilt & Chronic Illness
Do you ever feel guilty about being chronically ill? Of course we know being sick is not our fault. There is nothing that can be done to avoid being diagnosed with RA or make it go away completely. And if there were, we would. So, we’re innocent. Being sick with Rheumatoid Arthritis is not like [...]
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Should Chronic Pain Patients Be Treated in the ER?
What happens when a chronic pain patient goes to the ER? In the video below, A Chronic Pain Patient in the ER, a chronic pain patient is presented as either untruthful or mentally unstable. I’m not even sure which. However, the point of the video and many of the comments is that chronic pain patients [...]
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How Rheumatoid Arthritis Pain Affects Women’s Lives
There were some wonderful surprises at the American College of Rheumatology Scientific Session last month aka the ACR meeting. One of them was a poster presented by Dr. Vibeke Strand of Stanford. It’s not the topic that is wonderful, but the fact that rheumatologists are studying it. The study was called “The Impact of Rheumatoid [...]
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New Greece Shoe Policy for Diabetics Favors Amputation
When she picked me up from the airport recently, Katie Beth shared a shocking story she’d just heard on the news about diabetes patients in Greece receiving foot amputations instead of special shoes. Here’s how the diabetes shoe-story was reported in Keep Talking Greece: “If this isn’t an incredible story, I don’t know what it [...]
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