I’ll be honest. I’ve been absent from writing for almost a year now. Why? I feel like I have been in an increasingly difficult battle with rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, coronary artery spasm, ...

For clinical and treatment purposes, RA is segmented into four stages to track severity of the illness. Stage I highlights joint swelling and the increase in white blood cell count, basically the ...

This can begin even before diagnosis, as there are frequently long waiting periods for new patient appointments with a rheumatologist. As there is a national shortage of rheumatologists 1, it is not ...

When you live with a chronic illness or disability, it can sometimes be difficult to function in the workplace. However, many workers who are struggling may be reluctant to speak to their employers ...

While there has been some research into the possible benefit of probiotics in people with RA, more research is still needed. Because RA has been shown to have an impact on the gut microbiome, and ...

I've been working as a substitute special education paraprofessional (para) at a high school since the beginning of the school year. Teaching has never really been a serious career option for me; I ...

Many eons ago, not long after my diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, I went to the library to learn all I could about it. Ever since I’d taken Lamaze training so that I could give birth to my daughter ...

On the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Foundation website, Ailsa Bosworth wrote: “Something like 90 percent of people with rheumatoid arthritis experience pain and problems with their feet and footwear ...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a long-term (chronic) autoimmune disease. Autoimmune means that your immune system begins to attack and damage healthy cells. Damage from RA can continue over time and ...

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what comes next. It’s a pretty big subject when you live with a chronic illness like rheumatoid arthritis, especially because RA and its unpredictable nature ...

As many as a third of people with rheumatoid arthritis/rheumatoid disease (RA/RD) are diagnosed with what is called seronegative rheumatoid arthritis. 1 This means that rheumatoid factor is not ...

For many people, holiday plans include some kind of travel. In addition to the ordinary stress and chaos of travel, many of us with rheumatoid arthritis also need to figure out how to travel with ...