Living

So many times we hear about how able-bodied people glorify being homebound. We hear things such as “It must be so nice to be able to relax all the time!”...

Aside from the general knowledge of being absolutely exhausted all of the time, chronic fatigue is more than just feeling tired. In my personal experience it has brought on many...

One of the more frustrating things on the long list of AS annoyances is how it affects us when we are ill. Having a pesky immune system with a habit...

There is an accessible transportation service in Ontario called TransHelp. Many disabled and elderly people use it. For a reduced fair, eligible people can receive personalized door-to-door transportation. As someone...

In March 2021, a year after the pandemic began, I got COVID-19 I was a week away from my first COVID-19 vaccination, which felt like a cruel joke. Nonetheless, I...

(Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...) It's that time of the year for me and Keegan, my husband with AS. The highs are high and the lows are low...

Tuesday, 6 in the morning, I need to get up and make sure the kids are up and start to get them ready for school. My mind is telling me...

We can all feel cranky at times, this is normal. The frustration that comes from constant pain and fatigue, is for me, more than crankiness. I like to call this "Crankylosing Spondylitis." It’s the mix of emotions that I...

Before I got sick, I would get blood tests done twice a year. Just to make sure I wasn’t deficient in anything. Usually, I was deficient in iron. I used...

The holidays are long over now, but I felt the need to write this in case someone else suffered from them as long as I did. As I write this...

It was a celebration I'd been looking forward to for months — heading down to New Orleans, Lousiana for my birthday, which also happens to fall on Halloween weekend. I...

Ever since AS started making a real appearance in my life, I started dreading flights. This is sad to me because I used to love airplanes. I loved the in-betweenness...

Unfortunately, in all aspects of life, I am a procrastinator. While being a procrastinator, I am terrified of failure. So, let’s call me an anxious procrastinator. I leave things to the last minute. But while I’m sitting there not doing the things I should be, instead of relaxing, I...

Samuel Beckett’s absurdist classic Waiting for Godot often comes to mind when I’m left waiting for any significant period of time. Beckett’s play has been reimagined many times over, covering...

These past few tumultuous years make me wonder how my ancestors managed to do as well as they did with their own trials and tribulations. All my elders from my...

I had another surgery just recently. This time it was a selective procedure for my thumb osteoarthritis on the right hand. I had the left-hand thumb repaired with ligament reconstruction...

Have you noticed how good people in arthritis advertisements look? Each time I see one of those commercials, I think, wow, I want to feel like that. Inject this or...

I recently got asked by someone I met through coaching and lifestyle self-management how I got AxSpa? That is a very good question, and one question that haunted me for...

When you live with disability and or chronic illness, you can be so focused on finding that “cure” or thing that will make your life more like what it used...

Trying to make a living while living with a chronic condition may be possible depending on the severity, but also may be one of the hardest things to accomplish for...