New RA Accessibility Tool for the Cold, Winter Months

I recently found a new tool/product that has really transformed how I handle the cold winter months. Although I’m in Florida, the temperatures can get down in the lower 40s in my area, which is very cold for me (especially as I’m used to over 90 degrees in the summer every day).

The product I use are compression gloves that wrap around my joints and directly attack the swelling and inflammation that I often have in the morning when it’s cold (and even when it’s not cold, too!).

I’ve talked about this product before, but what I want to talk about here is how I’ve modified them to better fit my needs. I hope this will help anyone who has to deal with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) pain that comes from colder weather.

Compression gloves and a handheld heating pack

While the gloves are great in and of themselves, I’ve found that sticking a small handheld heating pack in the palm of my hand and pulling the gloves over my hands/the heating pad is super helpful in those cold mornings when my joints feel very stiff.

Depending on which heating pad you get, they can last quite a long time. The small ones I have end up losing their heat after about 4 hours, but that is plenty of time to warm up my joints and to feel some relief.

More than that, it helps me be ready for the workday quicker than not having the heating pads.

Pros and cons

Unfortunately, I cannot find the exact link for the gloves that I bought, but if you search for compression arthritis gloves, it should pop up.

They are a dark grey color and have openings for your fingers to extend out of the rest of the glove - which arguably is a design flaw in my eyes since my fingertips can often be just as affected by my RA as other parts of my hand. But alas, they still work well.

The gloves are quite tight if you have swollen and/or big hands but, in my own personal experience, the tighter the gloves are, the better they function to relieve inflammation.

Plus, since the gloves conform to your hand, the heating pad on your palm radiates and circulates the heat throughout the rest of your hand, which is much needed.

Modifying my life to function

Having to create such an accessibility tool reminds me of how much I have to modify my life in order to function "normally" — whatever that means. I used to feel quite sad at this prospect, at the feeling that I would have to live like this forever. That this would be my only way of existing, and maybe it is, but I’ve found that is okay. Or at least, it has to be because that’s just how it is.

On a positive spin, at least creating these accessibility tools inspires me to be more creative and to view the world in a much more nuanced way than before. When you have such a dichotomous way of thinking, you often miss out on the important things in life, on the way that other people live their lives — or more accurately, are forced to live their lives.