The Girl With Arthritis

One place I can commonly be found is at the library, and that's not a surprise considering I volunteer there. I gets me up and moving, and I enjoy the work: Typically putting away books and tidying. The area I most commonly work in tends to be the children's room, which I love aside from the low shelves and the messes that appear as you're not looking. Regardless, I adore the library: Books are one of my favourite ways to learn. But I know too well it's usually people who teach us the most important lessons. In my first few weeks there, I met a woman and her young son. The children's room was filled with children of every age playing or doing homework, and many parents supervising. I was shelving DVDs when the woman came with the little boy, the both of them with a spring in their step. The woman spoke with an excited voice, pointing out paintings the children had done earlier and the different sections. The boy didn't speak but he smiled at everything. The tw...

A couple days ago I had the chance to catch up with my cousin, of whom I had not gotten the chance to sit down and talk with in years. I enjoyed our time immensely. My cousin is very interested in food health. Somewhere in that conversation Arthur popped up. You can see where I am going with this. My cousin very much believes I could cure my arthritis by eating a raw diet, with plenty of white foods like garlic to support immune health. And I agree. I might be able to. I genuinely believe that people are able to cure themselves or go into remission through diet. I've seen it happen and it makes sense that if we put good things in our bodies, only good can come. But, of course, it doesn't work for everyone. I've seen it fail numerous times as well. Everyone's body is different, and it will react differently to different things. Let me say now that I've never really tried diet changes. Do I believe it could work? Yes, I do. I believe it can work for lots of people...

I recently read a book called The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Who is one of my favourite Youtube stars). Anyway, not to spoil the story, the main character has cancer. She is very straightforward with the idea of dying and suffering, also making jokes of it. What made me love the book so much is how much I related to her. She told us readers so many truths of chronic illness. Things that I've been through, even if it wasn't cancer. Quite a few times I found myself crying at parts people would not cry at because I knew what the character felt. I knew the emotions, the fears, the pains. One of the things the character said was that in the ER they always ask on a scale of one to ten, how bad is your pain? And that when she couldn't breathe and was in terrible pain, she held up nine fingers (she couldn't talk because of how badly she could not breathe). Later the nurse came in and said she was a strong person because she gave pain that was way more than ten a nine....

Arthritis is different for everyone. Different people respond differently to treatment. Some people can be in the same amount of pain but tolerate it very differently. And no two cases of arthritis are exactly the same. My arthritis is not the same as another's. For example, I cannot tolerate bathing or swimming in cold water. It's a proven fact that those with autoimmune arthritis feel cold, heat and pain more than those without it. And I know it's the case with me. While some people may mention that, say, a swimming pool is cold when they dunk their feet in, I feel cold and pain. My muscles tighten and I can feel an ache that goes deep into my muscles, as if my bones were ice. Like I said, we all react differently.