Parenting Without Pain: Dressing and Clothing Life Hacks
I am proud to be a guest blogger with the wonderful patient resource Creaky Joints. I am currently writing a series of posts on the topic of Parenting Without Pain. The posts will tackle how parents with arthritis or other painful joint conditions can approach activities of daily living involved in caring for children in a way that minimizes joint pain. My first topic is Dressing and Clothing Life Hacks. In this post, I cover everything from clothing selection (more zippers, less snaps!) to joint protection strategies, regardless of materials used (such as using a hand splint, as pictured below). Click here for the full post! (Note: as of 2019 the post isn’t available due…
My Chronic Illness Playlist
Why music? While managing my autoimmune disease rheumatoid arthritis over the last 12 years, I’ve found music to be helpful in a variety of situations. Some songs help me calm down when I’m anxious, other songs allow me to just “be” in a sad moment, and some music inspires me or puts everything in perspective. Not surprisingly, research has shown that listening to music can have many positive effects on one’s mood as well as other aspects of the mind. Research specifically on the use of music in persons with chronic illness have found it to have beneficial effects as well. With that in mind, I’d like to share my personal “chronic illness playlist.” I’ve divided the songs…
Bringing Home Baby: Tips for Meeting the Caregivers’ Basic Needs
It’s hard to put into words how simultaneously joyful, exhausting, transcendent, stressful, surreal, and miraculous the first few months home with an infant can be. Now that I’m emerging from the fog but the experience is still fresh in my mind, I’d love to share some tips and strategies that helped me adjust to parenthood* over the last five and a half months. While pregnant, I found countless resources for how to care for a newborn, from feeding to sleeping to swaddling to safety. However, there were less resources available for how to care for myself and other primary caregivers in the newborn days. Thus, I will focus on these…
Arthritis Humor and the Therapeutic Powers of Laughter and Social Media
Last week I started a GIF based Tumblr blog called “Arthritis Humor.“ My goal for this blog is to help patients with autoimmune arthritis (and other chronic illnesses) transcend their experiences via humor, and feel less alone by connecting to others through shared laughter. Why find the humor in arthritis? As a healthcare professional and patient, I will concede that there is nothing intrinsically funny about either category of arthritis: osteoarthritis (“wear and tear” arthritis, the kind associated with aging) or autoimmune arthritis forms such as rheumatoid arthritis (whereby one’s own immune system mistakenly attacks the lining of one’s joints and other body systems as well). However, as a patient with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), I believe…