Tag Archives: arthritis

Lucy. Bikes. Arthritis. Depression. Pinterest. This Post Has Everything.

Posted on October 25, 2012 | Leave a comment

I am consumed by pain. I don’t want to write about it anymore. The Internet tells me that if I share my story, other people with arthritis will come and share coping tips or learn coping tips and I’ll become part of a community. I don’t care. Pain is my dark passenger. I take a lot of pills. Most of them are supplements that aren’t proven to do anything, but I’m hopeful. Sometimes, I take an anti-nausea pill and then 30 minutes later I take an opiate and then fall asleep for a long time. Those are days when my neck (which has some sort of spasm problem) has been bad enough to make me mean. Opiates don’t help my knee. A long time ago, before Jack was born and when Jack was a baby, I couldn’t get up and down from the floor. I feel like that again. My hands don’t close all the way.

I increased my dose of antidepressants, but I’m fighting with the drug companies’ patient assistance programs over the wording on the prescriptions  that I got from my doctor. They have to be worded exactly right, or I can’t get the patient assistance. So I have a week or so of antidepressants left.

It’s OK, it’s temporary. Life just does not seem to care that I’d like a little breather, here.

Avery and Jack learned to ride their bikes without training wheels, and I’m the one who taught them. (mostly) I did get Avery a midsized bike with 20″ instead of 24″ wheels as shown in this photo, since she’s just a wee too small for this bike. As soon as we get to the point where she doesn’t throw her helmet down in anguish 5 minutes into a bike ride, I think we’ll be OK. (She is happy that she’s learned to ride her bike, but not yet ready to “go on a bike ride”)

Lucy has developed a horrific smell. She needs a bath apparently one thousand times a week.

IMG_6064

I started a new online venture selling treasures that I gather and rehab. I’m not rehabbing much right now, but soon. I made my first sale about 30 minutes after I launched the store.

When I hate everything and everybody which is a lot of the time during election season, I hang out on Pinterest. But this website, Pintester, is the best thing I’ve seen in a long time. Love it.

I’d like to use arthritis as an excuse for the quality of this post. I’ll skip that and just say I don’t need excuses. Sometimes we write well and sometimes we just write.

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Posted in ailments, work

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same oldish

Posted on October 7, 2009 | Leave a comment

Life is suffering. I have a whole lot of life right now. Today was hopefully what I like to call the hump day of a flare, the worst day in a string of days that progressed from “what’s going on I feel weird” to “holy fucking shit I can’t breathe”. My theory and my prayer to the Universe is that tomorrow will begin the string of days that starts with “hmm, what was I so upset about yesterday?” and ends with “I’m going for a run! Bye!”.

How many days? There’s no telling. Rheumatoid Arthritis is a quirky fucker and the universe seems to know my absolute love and adoration for surprises and how much I completely abhor any kind of structure or foreshadowing and how I just can’t get enough of platitudes like “live every day as if it were your last!”, so I got the best of the best of all the fun diseases.

So days like today and the ones leading up to it, it’s like watching a powerwheels battery decrease. (see? clever!) Monday, the car is awesome, fast and kid drives for hours. Every day since, you get a little less from the car until Thursday the kid might as well get out and push it. The gears complain, the motors whine, and finally the child gets out and says “my car is broken! need to charge the battery!”

So here I sit, mid project that should have taken about 2 days to complete including paint drying time. Waiting. Waiting for my fine motor skills to return so that I can work the screwdrivers and pliers, waiting till I can kneel with a reasonable expectation that I’ll be able to get back up on my own.

Tomorrow is the day though, the coast toward normalcy. I’m on a trickle charger, and every day I’ll get a little stronger. In the meantime, fuck it. Any project that takes a lot longer than it should just gives me that much more time to enjoy the process. right? Now will someone explain that to my 5 year old?

Gaucho Mod Photo Set- bookmark it for updates as I go:
Gaucho Before

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Posted in Day To Day

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Viva La Vibram

Posted on August 21, 2009 | 6 Comments

Yesterday literally as I was lacing up my running shoes, my husband walked in holding the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen: the package with my new (hopefully correctly sized) Vibram FF’s. If I may say so myself, they are bad-ass. They’re the coolest blue, with just enough lime green accent to be sassy.

vibram fivefingers sprint

Oh wait, do you care how well they work?

Are you going to shake your head and tell me:

1) that you could never wear something so ugly or
2) that having something between your toes would drive you insane or
3) that I’m going to be sorry one day when I destroy my knees and ankles

Well. I’ll just let google help you with that last one. Google “running hurts knees” and “new york times magazine”.
Go ahead, I’ll wait right here.

Ok. Now, my lifelong hate for all things toe separating is well documented. Besides the fact that Vibrams are god-awful ugly, they were never even on my radar because just the sight of them made me want to shield my toes, maybe even tape my toes together with duct tape.

I don’t know what turned me. Maybe it was that perceived authority that the personal trainer at the gym lords over a person. I was at one of my three free sessions with the 12 year old trainer and she was wearing hers.

“omg your shoes!” I said.
“May I take a photo of those? I didn’t think I’d ever see anyone in real life wearing them. My friend Neil posts a link to them every time I complain about my hiking shoes”

She showed admirable restraint, did not throw me on the floor and whip my ass, and suggested that I try them on at the local outfitter.

“I can’t stand stuff between my toes”, I said. “Really. I panic when something is between my toes. I can’t even get a pedicure because of those little foam torture devices they use to keep polish from rubbing off”

She said “me too. these are different. go try some on”

And I did, and the rest is history, sort of.

Remind me to tell you about my experience with the local outdoor store whose owner, when I questioned the fit, suggested that I was “overthinking the fit” and that she’d never been trained by Vibram to instruct people to seat their heels in the shoe first, and that there is no difference between women’s and men’s styles. (for the record, mens vs womens are different in width, and sizing is different- for instance men’s 40 is 10 inches long while women’s 40 is 9.5 inches.) Suffice to say that my 15 year old daughter, who wears a women’s size 10.5 and is 6 inches taller than me, is the proud owner of a pair of men’s size 40 Vibram Sprints that were refused return. She loves them. Oh wait, should I tell you that I wear a women’s size 8, or 38 Eu?

Note: here’s a very comprehensive fit guide to each model Vibram FF shoe.

Whatever, I was telling you about the performance. I’m trying to find a fun sport that has very little equipment, something I can just step out the door and just DO. I thought it was hiking, but then I came home to Florida. You see where this is going? At 37, I decided to try my hand at running, even though I’ve got “trick knees” and “chronic knee pain” and Rheumatoid Arthritis. That last one isn’t in quotes because it’s true.

I bought new running shoes because my hand me down New Balance must have been too old without enough support. My knees were KILLING me after just a couple 60 second runs. I was vindicated. It’s true- I’m just too beat up to do all that high impact cardio. But I was determined. I read up on form and decided to train through the pain, to condition my body to do the new sport.

Somewhere along the way I stumbled on barefoot running. What? My knees? Hurt because my shoes have too much cushion? The world is round?

I got the Vibrams. I gave it a shot.

I’m not looking back.

I’m on week 5 of the couch to 5K program. 2 weeks ago I was instructed to take a break after a run left me incapacitated and sporting huge lumps of inflammation under my kneecaps that were so tender to the touch that I screamed when touching them. Yesterday I ran almost the whole 5K. I might have been about 1/4 mile short. I did it in my Vibram Sprints (right out of the box, by the way, first time wear. what? no break in period? the world is round?), did a quick gym circuit, came home and did some yoga in my Vibrams.

I keep looking down at my knees for the lumps. I keep jabbing the spot, trying to dig into the tenderness. It just isn’t there.

Believe the hype. Take off your shoes.

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Posted in "couch to 5k", running

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Two Years Ago

Posted on July 21, 2009 | 2 Comments

Two years ago this summer I slowly began to struggle with everyday tasks: lifting the baby, getting up off the floor, opening a bottle, buckling a car seat. Eventually my joints swelled to cartoon proportions, preventing me from closing my fists, or wearing tight shoes. I stopped going to the gym because moving my knees was excruciating, and I couldn’t place my wrists on the floor to do downward facing dog in Yoga.

I was eventually diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis, given prescription medications which did not give me lasting relief, and told that I would feel like this off and on for the rest of my (shortened, statistically) life. I juice fasted, I eliminated allergenic foods from my diet, and I modified my wardrobe to exclude zippers, buttons, and any but the easiest slip on shoes.

It felt like one day I just woke up not in pain anymore. I’m not sure if that’s exactly how it happened, but I’m not in pain anymore. Twice I’ve climbed out of bed slowly to realize that I’m swollen and stiff, and I steel myself for another several months of immobility, and twice now I’ve been back to normal within days.

Now, two years later, I work out every single day in one form or another. Hiking, kayaking, yoga. I’m doing a program called couch to 5K, which cruelly asks me to run for 90 seconds at a time. Tonight I’m going rollerblading.

What a difference two years of absolute mystery can give us

The allopathic literature contends, “no one knows what causes Rheumatoid Arthritis”. I don’t accept that. I don’t accept that I am doomed to a daily regimen of pain reliever and a shorter life expectancy just because no one wants to do the legwork to nail down the cause of this disease. I’m just not gonna live like that. I will fight this, and I will win.

and this, a few days later:

September 3, 2007

In a million years I wouldn’t have imagined myself measuring a good day by how far I can open and close my hands, and whether I can lift my baby, or walk through the grocery store.

Not only can I lift my baby, but I can bench press my 5 year old (shut up, I”m small and she’s heavy) and carry my kayak. I can hold plank position for over a minute and I can hike up a (small) mountain in the 95 degree heat of the desert, and I can come out of plow so slowly you can’t even see me move.

I’m calling that a win.

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