NICE fiddles while RA burns a hole in the economy and our joints

I got my shiny new NRAS magazine through the post today. Great to see an article by Rheumatoid Arthritis Guy in there! Well done RA Guy! But there's always something in there to get me aeriated, and the first magazine of 2010 was no exception! Interesting also to see a two-page spread on the 'European …

Crazy searches

There was a rash of posts a little while ago about the things people search for to stumble across our blogs. Alas, at the time I didn't have any particularly wacky searches, but now I have! These are two of my top searches in recent days: "Japanese girl" and "whether the weather be not, whether …

Sick, sick, sick …

No I'm not actually sick, I'm just sick to death of the way hormones seem to rule my life. Until Wednesday I'd been menstruating pretty much constantly since before Christmas.  By Sunday last I looked and felt like death warmed up, was bursting in to tears at the slightest provocation (or no provocation) and figured it was …

Woohoo – go Wren and Warm Socks!

Well done to Warm Socks with ∞-itis and Wren with Rhemablog for getting to the finals for Best Patient Blog at MedGadget.com. Both great blogs by fantastic, inspirational people. Now they NEED YOUR VOTE! Vote for them here. You can only do one vote per day per computer - but you could always use two …

The ramblings of a bewildered and broke Penguin

Firstly a 'big shout out' to Warm Socks for reading comment replies. Well done to you,  m'dear! I also read them when I remember to tick the little box, but I usually don't remember. Secondly, for them as don't keep up with comment replies, like me, tinglywinglypingly is a thing of the past - hurrah. …

Tingly wingly pingly

That's what a friend of mine (I'm sure Maggie can guess who) has started calling me, since I mentioned this strange tingling in my hands and wrists that's started this morning and won't go away. It's both hands, so figure it's not just a random trapped nerve thing. Most likely it's swelling in my elbows …

The hidden costs of even mild R.A.

I'm part of the Norfolk Arthritis Register (NOAR) study, which is an epidemiological study around rheumatoid arthritis. They look into all sorts of things, physical, mental and social, that affect R.A. patients, from an epidemiological standpoint - i.e. they look at lots of us and then see what the statistics say. In spite of the …

Wax Bath Therapy, Compression Gloves and … stuff

Well I had my OT appointment yesterday and my first wax bath therapy treatment for the RA in my hands. Mmmmmmmmm ... 'heaven, I'm in heaven' ... or at least I was for about twenty minutes yesterday! The theory behind the wax bath therapy is, as I understand it, that the hands, having been nicely …

Understanding R.A. – Buckle Me Up

Rheumatoid arthritis is a very hard disease to get to grips with - not just because one has to learn to live with the fact that it's a progressive and incurable disease (at the moment), but because you just don't know how it's going to affect you day to day, and because everyone's R.A. is …

G.P. Practice – what’s gone wrong in this country

As usual, there's something I've been trying and failing to put into words for ages, only to find that someone has done it very elegantly for me already! I'm going to copy it to our local practice manager (who is also a friend.) I am not a fan of the Daily Mail, but I stumbled …