The Girl With Arthritis

A few weeks ago I was talking with a student nurse. Our conversation somewhat ended coldly, but not the way you would expect. You see, this person happened to say, "I mean, it's just arthritis." I kind of smirked, gave a small laugh and said "You're lucky you said that to me and not a patient: I know what you meant, but a patient would think you just completely dismissed their pain." As I gave her the heads up, she proceeded to obviously lose attention and began to text and laugh at a message, not acknowledging I had spoken at all. I get it. Nursing is an extremely difficult career. Believe when I say I understand- not completely, of course, since I'm not a nurse- but I see a lot of things they put up with and lots of great things they do enough to see the passion behind it. I'm in hospitals enough to be reminded of this constantly. And I understand that there will be one patient with a slight fever who insists they are extremely ill and in agon...

I apologise for being away for so long, I've had a very long and busy week between school, school work , a family gathering and also seeing a film I've wanted to see for quite a while with one of my best friends. At the moment, I have many Enbrel side effects including headaches and fatigue. In fact I fell asleep after school, of which I never do unless I'm extremely ill. Tonight I have worked on my own clothing design for a shirt. This is completely and utterly unnecessary work. The reason I am doing it is because a girl in my class took credit for an idea I came up with and drawings I did last year. She didn't mention it was my idea, she took all the credit and continued to saying that she was the only person who cared. I am not letting her win this. I am bringing all my former drafts to class as well as my NEW ideas, which in my mind are brillant. I'm not letting her get away with this. If we're not allowed to cheat on tests, why should we be allowed to che...

Having arthritis, people can't physically see you're in pain. Thus, you get looks of 'get over it' or something every time you rub your fingers to soothe the pain after you sharpen your pencil in school. Or limp while carrying a heavy, heavy backpack across a huge building trying to get to class in less that three minutes. Honestly, I get why they do that: I truely understand. What I don't understand is why they do the same thing when something is visiblly painful or life changing. When I was thirteen my uncle was dieing of a very long and weary battle with cancer. It was rather traumatic for all the adults in my family, never mind a child (or I should say children, as I have many cousins). One day in a conversation totally unrelated conversation my very good friend told me that 'just because my uncle is dieing does not mean I am the only person who has lost a family member.' The conversation was about how bad I felt for a family who had just lost their thre...