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Monday, June 15th, 2009

Taking Care of My Rheumatoid Arthritis: Follow up.

Each time I suffer a setback with this disease, I have learned something. I thought I had learned this lesson long ago, but I guess I was wrong and just needed a real BIG reminder. It is easy for me at times, to slip back into some bad habits and that is exactly what I did. In a unsuccessful attempt once again to be supermom, I managed to work myself into a flare. For me it has always been almost second nature to focus on my kids and my family at the expense of myself. I want the best of everything for my kids and I want to be able to do it all with them. This is where I get the most joy in my life. So saying I need to rest or that I have scheduled too much and need to pare back things is something that I have had the hardest time with. I don’t want to miss a minute with them and sometimes that is just what I need to do to recharge my batteries and take care of my rheumatoid arthritis.

I have a wonderful husband and 3 amazing boys who help me with anything and everything that I ask. My oldest son is always one to lend my his elbow whenever we come upon some uneven terrain without my even asking. As much as I love them, they are not clairvoyant and can’t possibly know all that I may need when I don’t communicate that to them. There have been many times when my husband has asked me if I was overdoing it and I just ignored him. I should know better, but I was having too much fun.

One of the most challenging issues for me as a mother is to find balance in my life. I try very hard to balance my life as a wife and mother and business owner and blogger as well as a myriad of other hats I wear on a daily basis. But sometime no matter what my good intentions are I find myself falling back into bad behaviors. I know that I need to put my health and self first so that there is more of me to share with the rest of the world. I know that intellectually, but somehow I managed to put myself on the back burner while I focused my energy on my kids and husband and their needs instead of what I know I should have.

It seems ridiculous that I could have just overdone things and ended up right back where I started from. And after a mere 3 days of tending to my “self” I would get back on track. It just goes to show what a big impact our choices have on us. Each day that I took for myself I started to feel better and better. I am telling myself LESSON LEARNED and I certainly hope that I have finally learned this one. It is easy to forget how bad it can get when you are feeling good. This time I got an urgent message from my body to slow down or else. I was in a great deal of pain and I am sorry to say that I caused much of it myself.

I especially want to say Thank You to all of you that sent your well wishes here and on facebook and twitter. It went a long way to helping me feel better and I am extremely grateful.

Tags: arthritis, blogger, care, facebook, flare, learned, lesson, rheumatoid, setback, twitter

Posted in Decisions, Health/Fitness, Lesson Learned | 3 Comments »

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

The iPhone and Rheumatoid Arthritis

Recently I misplaced my phone. I have no idea what happened to it, but somehow it disappeared. After a week long failed search I finally gave up and decided I could no longer survive without a cell phone. So off I went to the AT&T store to find a new phone that would fit my needs.

I am really not a technology person and I really wasn’t sure what I was looking for. But as I looked through every display phone in the gallery I found myself going back to the iPhone. I really wanted to explore all my options before making a choice. It took me quite a while because I tried out just about every phone in the place. My choice was based on a lot of factors. Ease of use, size ,weight and keypad were just a few of my requirements. I wanted a phone that gave me the ability to tweet when the mood hit me and I wanted to be able to work on a post from just about anywhere. You never know when inspiration will strike and I wanted the ability to work whenever, where-ever. I narrowed my search down to the iPhone and the Blackberry Curve.

The deciding factor ended up being rheumatoid arthritis. The Curve offers many of the same features as the iPhone with one glaring and all important (to me especially) difference. Touch screen technology. Until you have experienced the difference you cannot imagine how wonderful touch screen technology is. I used to avoid text messaging because my fingers hurt. Either my fingers hurt when I started to text or by the time I finished texting my fingers would begin to hurt and so I just stopped texting altogether.

The design of the iPhone makes texting more comfortable in the hand. The full qwerty keyboard adapts for different applications and it is a lot easier than it looks. I was afraid that I would have a hard time with the touch screen distinguishing between the characters. It takes a little while to get used to where you need to place your finger to hit the intended character but once to get used to it the typing can go really fast. When I say place your finger I mean just that. The effort required to chose a character is slight. You barely need to touch the screen at all. Because the screen works based on body heat you don’t need to worry about unintended usage

I have had the phone for 3 days now and I can’t say enough good things about it. Currently there are 35,000 applications that can be used on this phone and the applications are increasing. Really this is far more than any phone that I have ever owned. Within minutes I had sync’d up my itunes and all my contacts in outlook so that even though I didn’t have my sims card from the lost phone all my phone number were in my new phone in seconds.

Just like the ads say there really is an app for everything. I have twitter, facebook, ebay, amazon, itunes and the list goes on. Every time I go to the app store I find something else I want to add. Some of the apps cost a minimal amount while others are free.

Price is an important factor in considering anything these days. This phone is not cheap. The cost was $199.00 with a 2 year contract with AT&T ( without the 2 year contract the phone retails at $599.00) and you must agree to a Data Plan with AT&T when you purchase this phone. This data plan is a commitment that cannot be backed out of. The data plan is part of owning this phone. The Blackberry’s data plan can be backed out of after 30 days if you decide that you do not want to use wi-fi service.

A fellow twitterer told me over the weekend that her provider changed her phone for free when she told them that she had rheumatoid arthritis and that she could no longer text without pain. She lives in the UK so you might want to ask your provider what they may be willing to offer for your circumstances. It is worth asking.