Out of the Blue

The tree is up. Stockings are hung. Most of the gifts are purchased and wrapping will begin in a day or two. My kids are safe and will be with me for Christmas. I have the next two weeks off. We will have (too much) food and we will have a lot of fun, I have no doubt. I am blessed, and I know it. I'm thankful. But I am also deeply sad. Sometimes I find it difficult not to just break down and cry. I put on a carefully cheerful mask every day and I prop it up with smiles and laughter. Sometimes I even feel those happy feelings. Then darkness comes and I'm tired; I go to my room and settle in with my dogs, and the tears come. I guess it would be wrong to start a post like this and not explain why I feel the way I do, but the truth is, I don't really understand it myself. Maybe that's why I'm writing this, to work it out and try to comprehend it. Terrible things have happened in the world - Syria, Aleppo, and South Sudan are a few examples. I think of the people...

After my recent bad experience with Prednisone ( Touch and Go ), I have been giving a lot of consideration to alternative treatments and therapies for RA. Medications are wonderful when they work as they are meant to, but the lists of side effects with approved RA drugs are long and frightening. Probably the best of these treatments are the biologic medications - they work in two-thirds of patients, and slow or halt the progression of the disease. The problem is their cost. A year's worth of treatment with Enbrel or Humira could cost as much as $40,000. Health insurance may pay a portion of this cost, but because the expense is so great, most insurance companies require that all other treatment options be exhausted before approving biologics. Plaquenil isn't working well for me - I've been taking it since January and haven't experienced much beneficial change. I am reluctant to try Methotrexate because of it's side effects, which include hepatotoxicity, chronic he...

Yesterday was beautiful. Blue sky. Warm sunshine. It was humid but not unbearable. My bones, joints, and muscles felt okay, so I got up and went hiking in the Cherokee National Forest, which is practically just out my front door. My love of the woods is something I got from my dad, and that's why I chose to go hiking yesterday to mark the day of his death. Also, I needed to be somewhere else, doing anything I could to keep from thinking about the loss. When I was around fifteen, my dad and I would go walking in the woods around our farm. He would tell me stories about where the brandy distillery used to be, relatives who used to farm the land, or take me to see old abandoned houses that were hidden in the forest. He knew everyone who had lived around there and could tell tales about all of them. One of the most difficult things about having RA is that it limits the amount of hiking I can do. There's nowhere I feel closer to my dad than when I'm in the woods. Since I...

One summer, when I was about six years old, I was wading barefoot in the spring below the house when I stepped on a shard of glass. It pierced my foot about two inches below my fourth and fifth toes on the right. Because the water was so cold, I didn't notice right away - it felt like I'd stepped on a sharp stone. I kept wading, kept playing, until the ache became persistent. Sitting on the stone steps that led down to the spring, I saw a small cut which had been washed clean by the water. It hurt when I pressed on it, but there was very little blood. I put my shoes back on and went on with my day. I didn't tell anyone. I knew only too well what happened when you told people about things like that. They wanted to probe around in the wound and make sure nothing was left in there. In my short life, I'd already had countless splinters dug out of various appendages, and I was not eager to experience that again. Besides, it was just a little cut. I kept quiet, but the pain...

Yesterday, I stood on top of a hill sprinkled with tiny yellow buttercups that danced and nodded in the breeze. The sky was bright blue with white ripples of cloud. Down the hill, families had gathered at the playground and the air echoed with children's laughter. On the path that wound around the hill's crest, an occasional jogger or dog walker passed. I watched and waited. Since I moved far away from home, I've developed a habit of searching faces for ones that are familiar. At first, I was "seeing" people I knew everywhere. In the past year or so, that's pretty much stopped. I've settled in, I guess. I've stopped looking for friends and family in the strangers around me. But not yesterday. Yesterday, I was hoping against hope to see a familiar face. So much so that I almost convinced myself that I had. But my heart knew I was wrong, even when my eyes were convinced otherwise. So I stood, and I waited, and let the wind blow over me. It was a beaut...