Living

As a sick and disabled person, it isn’t very often that I actually get to take risks or even have the choice to. I recently took a road trip with...

I know, I know-—none of us really know what we’re doing with our lives. The majority of the world is just fumbling around hoping that everything works out for the...

Movement has played – and still does – a huge role on my healing journey. If I don’t move daily, my body is very quick to send signals of stiffness...

My resolution this year is two-fold: to be kinder to myself and let go of expectations. Oftentimes I am very hard on myself. This was true before I got AS...

If you read the first part of my conversation with advocate René Agterhof, you will have realized what a truly inspirational man he is. He is also full of surprises...

As a health coach who specializes in axial spondyloarthritis I often find myself talking with people about their experience of pain. Unsurprisingly, it’s the most common topic that comes up...

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...