Articles

Almost five years ago, I talked with my rheumatologist about altering my treatment plan so that my husband and I could try to start a family. Though my rheumatologist was...

Today I made my Christmas list for Santa. Don’t those sound great? Yep, but here’s the reality: I already have a four-year-old Kindle Fire. It works great on airliners and...

Glance at the news online some morning or turn on the radio or TV at nearly any given moment and you'll find an alarming number of stories saturated with violence: shootings...

I like to think of myself as a practical person. However, if I’m honest, I sometimes put vanity and ego before practicality, even when it comes to RA. Rheumatoid arthritis...

Hundreds of our RheumatoidArthritis.netcommunity members recently participated in the “Handling the Holidays” survey; Thanks to everyone who took the survey! As we know, the holidays can be a wonderful time...

I don’t use the common name of the disease I’ve had for almost three decades. Instead, I call it rheumatoid disease, and there’s a reason. As a writer, I love...

I won’t deny that I love the Internet. I’ve been an avid website explorer, both for fun and for work, since the late 1990s. (Yes, I know how old that...

Many people with “invisible disabilities” have felt at one point or another that the severity of their condition is called into question. As it is possible to have severe rheumatoid...

On September 13, a 72-year-old disabled woman with multiple sclerosis lost her life in the California wildfire known as the Valley fire. She died because she was unable to leave...

This is without a doubt my absolute favorite time of year.  Yes, I actually do better RA wise once the days are a bit more crisp, the humidity has gone...

We’ve all been in those situations where someone shares with us that they have cancer, are in need of surgery, or have another serious health condition, and we’re left wondering...

I recently wrote about a terrible experience flying that resulted in my wheelchair being destroyed by the airline. Another part of this story concerned how I was treated by the...

"Ask and you shall receive" is a wonderful suggestion, but short of having a magic genie in our pockets, it is not true, for the most part.  However how I...

Everyone knows about hangovers, where one indulges in too much alcohol and then pays for it the next day in headaches and nausea. Those of us with rheumatoid arthritis are...

I confess: I love to dance. Always have. I am a dancing fool, a dancing queen. For as long as I can remember, I’d throw out my limbs in a...

When I was 28 years old, I started having a strange sort of pain in my chest. It felt like something sharp was jabbing into me, just to the right...

Tuesday morning I had a routine 6-month appointment with my rheumatologist. It seems that time flies between appointments and our main priority, besides seeing how my RA is doing, becomes...

Many eons ago, not long after my diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, I went to the library to learn all I could about it. Ever since I’d taken Lamaze training so...

There’s a lot more to rheumatoid disease than meets the eye. When I first started learning more about this disease about ten years ago, thanks to an increasingly useful Internet...

Long ago, on a pretty autumn morning, I woke with a miserably aching right jaw. My first thought was that I had a toothache--a terrible thought indeed because I’ve always...