RA Awareness Week

Next week is RA Awareness Week in the UK and the busy bees at the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society have created a series of wellbeing sessions under the banner #ourmindsRApriority - I do like RApriority ... 🙂 You can sign up for free sessions here. I'm feeling pretty lucky at the moment - I'm OK …

Flare finally over – woohoo!

Since I started the steroids a couple of weeks ago, I've been ticking of little milestones: today I can bend the leg a bit, today I managed to walk round the garden ... and bigger ones, today I stopped using my stick, today I made it onto my favorite local footpath ... but today's milestone …

Here comes the cavalry

Well, if you read this blog much you’ll have an idea I’ve been flaring, semi-flaring, recovering from flares and going into new flares, for a wee while now. (Or not - 'cause I realise I've failed to actually post about most of it!) I was quite shocked to find, when I did a little history, …

This is what I have to put up with

There's just one problem with the top notice on the side door of my GP surgery, below: Did you guess? No, I wasn't picking up on anything grammatical - although  I could... This door IS the different entrance you'll be using. I think they meant to stick the notice on the main door instead. <Insert …

Shielding letter: Part 2

This is that rare thing, Pollyanna Penguin trying to stay calm, measured and reasonable, and not 'fly off the handle' at the GP, since I don't particularly want to get thrown off the practice register. (Although if the practice up the road with the much better reputation would take me, that would be a blessing …

Shielding letter

Here in the UK there are two categories of 'vulnerability' to COVID-19, 'vulnerable' and 'shielding'. I've known I was in the vulnerable category from day 1 - in fact before day 1 of the lockdown. From a week or so before lockdown I was already practicing 'social distancing' and not going into shops etc. because …

A quick update during lockdown

Well, we're still locked down and I'm just getting used to the various terminologies - I find that I am not 'self-isolating' because that's what people who have symptoms of COVID-19 have to do, but I am vulnerable, although I'm not shielding. 'Confused? You won't be, after the next episode of SOAP!' (Anyone else remember …

Survey about COVID-19 and Plaquenel

I've been contacted by a scientist at the University of Ferrara who is looking into whether Plaquenil, also known as Aralan, chloroquine or hydroxychlroquine, can help with COVID-19/coronovirus. Please re-post, write your own version or whatever, if you blog, to get as many people filling this is as we can! Please take the survey here, even …

There’s a thin line …

There’s a thin line between bravery and stupidity and those of us who are saying they’re just going to ignore advice to self-isolate or socially distance and get on with their lives may be surprised to know that they’ve crossed it to the wrong side! COVID-19 is a pretty low risk disease to the vast …

Reframing

While I'm not a hippy-dippy-penguin-chickie, I do firmly believe that a positive attitude is helpful and makes one feel better than not having a positive attitude! After all, it's only common sense that if you go around feeling negative and responding negatively to things that happen all the time, you're going to put yourself in …