Introduction & Early Stages

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January 2008

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

If there were a show called “Dancing with the Arthritics” I’d be America’s #1 choice. That is to say, if my dancing partner were Betty White (of “Golden Girls” fame)(!). This became painfully – and I mean painfully – obvious at my brother’s wedding this past weekend. Hours of dancing does not bode well for an arthritic body like mine. In fact, it made me feel more arthritic, more creaky, more achy and more aggravated than anything else I’ve done in a long time.

It relegated me to the “Grandma Corner” of the dance floor – which is not the worst place in the world – but it was a good reminder of where I rank on the list of America’s Most Nimble. Oh well for me, right?

But the good news – and the reason I was not a “Pity Party of One” was that my brother got married! Finally! After 9 years of dating. When your younger brother ties the knot you know you’re getting old. And the family came together for a really great occasion and rang in the New Year together. What could be better than that?

To good health. To happiness. And to one heck-of-a CreakyJoints New Year.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Sometimes I wonder how many people out there know what it’s like. I look around a crowded subway car or a restaurant and I think “except for the old people – who here knows what it’s like to fall out of bed in the mornings…or look at a stairwell sometimes like it’s Everest?”

When you live with arthritis you live with an undercurrent – a low frequency hum in the back of your head – that says (at least to me, anyway) “I really hope it doesn’t stay like this forever”. Because forever is a long time to live with chronic pain in your hands and in your hips and in your neck and in your knee. Or anywhere. It’s not exactly the happiest thought to have, which is why I prefer to use those noise-canceling headphones and block it out entirely, but it’s there nevertheless, ready to remind me that I’ve got some inflamed joints, at every turn, pivot or stairwell. Or every jar of apple sauce which is just shy of being way too difficult to open.

Arthritis makes applesauce child proof. That can totally suck.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Funny thing happened overnight. I woke up in a cold sweat from a dream I had. It was about my arthritis and in my dream I had gotten so stiff and so tight that I froze in time. Kind of like the movie “Awakenings” (circa the 1970’s) – except minus the Robin Williams in a beard. I couldn’t move and when I tried to it hurt so much. A very odd sensation that even Freud would have trouble dissecting.

In retrospect it’s not exactly laugh-out-loud funny, but the kind of thing that happens to you which shakes you out of a funk and changes the way you look at yourself and your world. If only for a few fleeting minutes. For me it was about how lucky I am to be up and around, not frozen in time, and still able to open (most) bottles of food and drink. Which, when you think about it, is a really good thing…considering the alternative.