The Girl With Arthritis

I've had a wide variety of physical therapists in my time. My first was a young woman. I had to go to Physical therapy for a few weeks to recover  from a flare when I was eight. She was very nice, and I don't remember too much actual 'work,' because mostly it seemed like we played games and such. :) My next physical therapist came when I was about twelve. She was an older woman who always started out sessions by loosening my hip. She was very nice indeed, though she did not tolerate when I started giving up the last few minutes of the session: I had to be giving way more than humanly possible at ALL times. Sometimes I wondered if this was like military training. I had another physical therapist around that same time. He was an older man and very kind. I remember we had a lot of laughs. After he taped my feet so I wouldn't be so flat footed, he informed me I could stop walking like a robot. I only saw him a handful of times, though I did like when I got him. ...

During our lunch period, a friend of mine will buy food and -naturally- gets a bottle of milk with it. But, as he doesn't care much for milk, he gives it to me. Milk: *For strong, healthy bones! (*Excludes those with arthritis) Recently they changed the design of the cap: Instead of pulling a little tap and the top popping off, you have to twist the cap off. When the country decided to allow students of all different abilities to be educated together, I think they didn't get the memo that milks with caps that are hard to take off are a big no-no. The first time this ever happened I kind of just sat and stared at the bottle as if it would open itself if I stared long enough. Then I spent a minute or two clutching a cold bottle painfully and trying to twist the cap with the other hand. It took a while but I did do it. The second day I thought it would be really hard but I successed in one, painful turn. The third day I got too confident and hurt my hand trying to twist it in ...

Sometimes on television I find ads for miracle joint looseners or bone strengtheners or something to keep your muscles strong. They're meant for people older than fifty and they show fifty, sixty and seventy year olds do gymnastics, climbing mountains or carrying hundred pound sacks of flour on each shoulder. I can't do anything like that. I get angry (not jealous, angry) that these people who are older and have had so much experience be strong as a bull, versus my friends and I with arthritis who have no experience and are very weak, even with physical therapy and medications. Most of them have had arthritis since they were toddlers or young children: The oldest age to discover their pain was -I think- ten or so years. But you would think we were envious at that. We really aren't. Or that I know of. Perhaps we all do but we just don't admit it. If anyone really wants  to do something, they do it. No one goes and runs and puts themself in pain for nothing: Granted, ...