Pacing, planning and prioritising....

I am again, sitting on the couch in my pyjamas, though this time I am actually working (and by working, I mean waiting for a call to come through.) Note: if you ring a mental health helpline, the person you speak to may very well be wearing pyjamas. It's kind of an industry thing :P

Anyway, I wrote a blog post last night, but then the internet stole it and won't give it back.... or maybe I'm just really technologically challenged. The point is, I was too tired to re-write it and in the interest of not exhausting myself, I'm just going to post an article I wrote for my work newsletter instead. It's about pacing, so I thought it was apt...


When I think of self-care, I usually think of adding things to my day: adding exercise, eating healthy foods, getting enough sleep. Recently I’ve realised self-care is just as much about saying “no” to things. Now, I’m not talking about the obvious – saying no to cigarettes, alcohol, stress etc. (although that’s a part of self-care too!) What I mean, is saying “no” to those things that suck up our time and leave us collapsed on the couch at the end of the day.

When I’m trying to explain what it’s like to live with a chronic illness, I often talk about Christine Miserandino’s “spoon theory”. The essence of this theory is that, when you live with a chronic illness, everything you do costs you a “spoon.” Under normal circumstances, a healthy person will have an almost unlimited supply of “spoons”. They don’t need to worry too much about overdoing it and running out. A person with a chronic physical or mental illness will have a limited amount of “spoons”. To make sure they still have enough energy to make dinner at the end of the day, they will need to keep an eye on how many “spoons” they use up during the day.

This is where pacing, planning and prioritising come in. I know that for me to stay healthy, I need to really think about what I include in my day. There are things that I have to do because... well, they’re just facts of life – work, study, chores, cooking. There are things I need to do for my health – exercise, physio, doctors appointments, and then there are things that I want to do – creative projects, socialising, retail therapy etc. Prioritising doesn’t mean anything that’s not 100% necessary gets chucked off the list; it just means I have to work out how I’m going to fit it in without running out of “spoons”. It might mean that I choose to meet up with friends on the days I’m not working. Or it might mean that if I’ve got a doctor’s appointment and a deadline on a writing project, the cleaning might have to wait until tomorrow. If I know I’ve got a busy day coming up, I’ll make a big meal the day before so I can have leftovers for dinner rather than having to cook after a long day.

Learning to pace myself has been a hard journey. Sometimes I’ll wake up feeling like I have an unlimited number of “spoons” only to get halfway through the day and realise I just don’t have the energy to get everything done. Then there are the days where unexpected things happen, and my energy is taken up with things I hadn’t planned for. Either way, the next day I have to come back to it: pacing, planning and prioritising. It’s a slow journey, but in the end, it will all get done. Just maybe not as quickly as I thought.

Check out spoon theory at:

http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory-written-by-christine-miserandino/

Little Miss Autoimmune :-)

Shoulds don't work for me...

There's a part of me that feels silly, sitting down to write a blog post at this stage. This is only partly due to the fact that as I write, I'm sitting on my couch wearing pyjamas - that can only be described as reminisant of the ones Bridget Jones wears during her All by Myself meltdown - fluffy pink bed socks and an over-sized dressing gown. See, this doesn't embarrass me. Despite the fact that I'm still in my twenties, this is pretty much an average Saturday night for me. After years of thinking "I should be doing what other people my age are doing" or more realistically "I should pretend that I want to be doing what other people my age are doing" I have come to the realisation that "shoulds" just don't work for me. I'm happy sitting on my couch in cozy clothes on a Saturday night, and if I'm happy, why "should" I be doing something else.

But I digress...

The reason I feel silly writing a blog post at this stage, is that it has been *gulp* five months since I posted anything. I gave up even pretending I was going to post soon, because I could tell it just wasn't going to happen.

When I last wrote, I was incredibly sick. Both the joint symptoms and systemic symptoms of my arthritis were out of control... things got pretty hairy there for a while. I was having trouble... well doing anything really. Even getting up to go to the bathroom was a huge struggle, especially as I was having frequent falls. Simple tasks had become incredibly difficult and solid food had become a distant memory as the pain and stiffness in my jaw made chewing near impossible (eating icecream and soup for months on end, is not as fun as it might seem!)
Added to this, I'm prone to periods of insomnia and the constant pain was making falling/staying asleep hard to say the least. Crazy Helen was starting to emerge...

But, it's not all bad news. In fact, what happened next was about the best news I could have hoped for. I'm currently in a partial theraputic remission*

A stint on pain killers helped with the pain levels and sleep problems (thus saving my sanity!) but they couldn't do much to help the systemic symptoms. Among other symptoms, I had to have several weeks off work as the inflammation in my voice made shifts on the phone impossible (no-one ringing a helpline in crisis really wants to talk to creepy-croaky voice lady) and I had near constant double vision.

Fortuately my nurse managed to get me switched from Humira injections to Enbrel. Up until this point, I'd been told there were no more medical options for me. My doctor (and my nurse too, really) believed my condition was drug-resistant. Therefore switching me was going to have no effect. My nurse insisted on at least trying (she told me later that after arguing with my doctor he ended up saying "fine, do what you want, but it's not going to work.")

12 hours after the first Enbrel injection I was in a partial remission - at which point my nurse became pretty much my favourite person in the world! For a year before this, I hadn't been able to leave the house without Molly Stick, but the day after the injection I walked down the stairs unaided. Of course, my dad wouldn't actually let me go anywhere without Molly. I was all for going for a run that first morning, but he wasn't so keen on having to rescue me, if I collapsed!

It became clear that I wasn't in a full remission - I still had symptoms, though for the most part they were pretty minor. Every so often I'd wake with full on swelling and pain, but mostly they were at a manageble level.

Now... this post is getting a bit long, so I will pick up the story from here in my next post... (in the next installment I go to pain clinic and almost get murdered by an ipod!)

I'll just skip to my point. Part of the reason I've left it so long between posts is the number of shoulds piling up in my brain - "I should have posted already" "I should write my post tonight, despite the fact that I'm too tired" "I should have something more interesting to say" "I should be able to write this more coherantly" "I should do the housework/washing/cooking before I post" "I should write something BRILLIANT to make up for the long absence."

Well, I'm done with shoulds. I refuse to be paralysed by shoulds.

So there it is - I'm a Bridget Jones look-a-like, slack blogger... and I'm proud of it.

Thanks for reading

Little Miss Autoimmune :-)

*Not sure if everyone will understand the word "remission" in this context. I'll include a definition in my next post.

Systemic/flu-like symptoms of autoimmune arthritis

Until recently, when I heard the word ‘systemic’ I thought of films and news reports about corruption in governments or multimillion dollar corporations… Press conferences with someone saying “The problem is systemic” as an answer to why they hadn’t simply fired the CEO (or maybe assonated the country’s dictator.) Making a scapegoat of the CEO or Dictator in question, wouldn’t do anything to solve the wide spread corruption infecting the rest of the corporation/government.

Let’s pretend the only one of my joints affected by autoimmune arthritis was my left wrist. If autoimmune arthritis was (as many people imagine) a disease purely of the joints, I could conceivably amputate my left lower arm and no longer have arthritis. I doubt anyone would actually do this, but, for arguments sake, it could be considered a cure.

However, autoimmune arthritis is a systemic disease. In the example of the multimillion dollar corporation, the corruption was systemic because it was spread through all of the employees of the organisation. Firing the CEO would be like cutting off my lower arm. It would do nothing for the disease in the rest of my body.

In the last few weeks I’ve been having a systemic flare of my psoriatic arthritis. I’ve had inflammation in my throat, (making me loose my voice) inflammation in my eyes, (making me see double) inflammation of my skin, (causing rashes and skin ulcers) inflammation in my stomach, (causing pain and nausea) and a whole host of symptoms very similar to those of the flu – fatigue, fevers, dizziness, etc. All of these are caused by my arthritis and none of these would have been solved by the hypothetical arm-amputation.

I wrote this post as a participant in IAAM’s 2nd Annual International Autoimmune Arthritis Awareness Scavenger Hunt, currently happening online at their Facebook page. They are posting several Scavenger Hunt items through the end of Dec. 5th, I am posting #8: Systemic Affects. As I talked about in this blog entry, those dealing with Autoimmune Arthritis experience problems with the "whole system", from the core organs and out to the joints.

So this leads me to your task for Scavenger Hunt Awareness Items for #8: To earn 5 Awareness points (that can be exchanged at the end of the online game for free Awareness merchandise), find a photo of the body with organs and write which of these areas you (or the person you know with Autoimmune Arthritis) is affected. But you must post in the next 10 HOURS to earn your points. Time’s ticking!http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Buckle-Me-Up-International-Autoimmune-Arthritis-Movement-IAAM/124639837561193
*IAAM stands for The International Autoimmune Arthritis Movement, which will soon become the 1st nonprofit in history exclusively benefitting Autoimmune Arthritis. http://www.iaamovement.org/
Little Miss Autoimmune :-)

Update

OK, so I’m writing this post as part of the IAAM http://www.iaamovement.org/ online scavenger hunt (and also to update you on the happenings of the last couple of weeks.) I’m supposed to include a clue in this post, to direct people as to what to do next, in their online scavenging. Unfortunately, I’m not actually clear at this point as to what the clue is, so that may have to appear in the comments at a later point. :-)

So, the topic for this post/clue is the systemic/flu-like symptoms of autoimmune arthritis. I picked this out of scavenger hunt post topics, because I’m the middle of my first systemic arthritic flare (this may not be entirely true – I’ve probably had systemic flares before, but not understood what they were.) The past few weeks I’ve had inflammation not only in my joints, but in my throat, skin, eyes and stomach.

Before I became involved with IAAM, I didn’t understand the concept of autoimmune arthritis being a systemic illness. As a recap for those of you not so familiar with this, autoimmune arthritis is not just a disease that affects joints. Internal organs, soft tissue, skin AND joints can all be involved at different times, hence, systemic (I just went and looked up the definition, so I could get this right: Systemic – Of the bodily system as a whole, not confined to a particular part.)

I had some idea that at some point my internal organs could be affected, but I had thought this was rare and not really something I had to worry about. I didn’t really get that practically ANY part of my body could be affected, or that my arthritis could cause symptoms like nausea, fevers, fatigue and others very similar to the symptoms of viruses like the flu. I also had no idea that this was actually pretty common, not the rare occurrence I had imagined. In hindsight, I perhaps should have realised, as the only reason my doctor made the connection that the problems I was having were autoimmune based, was the fact that the inside of my mouth had turned into one giant ulcer. I had always put this down to being run down because of the arthritis, not that this was in fact a symptom of the arthritis itself.

So, to give you some idea of what a systemic can be flare like, I’ll describe what’s been happening to me over the last few weeks (no gory details, I promise, and please keep in mind that autoimmune arthritis is very different for each person experiencing it. Just because this is what it’s like for me, doesn’t mean that’s what it’s like for anyone else.)

In addition to my joints being stiff, swollen and sore (so much so that I couldn’t stand up, straighten my left arm or chew food,) I lost my voice for about a month. I could talk, but it hurt and my voice would get very croaky after about five minutes (not so great when my work involves six hour weekly shifts on a mental health helpline!) I had some swelling in my throat and the back of my mouth and swelling in my neck, almost like a glandular problem. I’ve come up in a rash on arms and hands, and have had six or seven skin ulcers. Fortunately, all but one of these healed with a little bit of antibiotic/steroid cream and the other cleared up reasonably quickly with some antibiotics and dressings. I’ve had inflammation in my eyes, which means I’m seeing double and have had some pretty impressive bouts of nausea/dizziness.

Probably none of these are things that people associate with “arthritis.” I don’t really blame them, as I didn’t understand it myself. Fortunately, I read the information on IAAM’s website when I did, as I wouldn’t have realised what was happening otherwise.

Now, back to the scavenger hunt. As I said, I’m not sure what the clue is, so if you’ve been directed here via another clue, check the comments and hopefully it will be there. Actually, just thinking about this, I’m not sure if I’m meant to post this yet, or whether I was supposed to wait for further instructions. Unfortunately, I can't do that, as my plans to participate in the online scavenger hunt have been set aside by the fact that I've had an elderly family member pass on this week and her funeral is this afternoon. So, I guess if you're looking for a clue - it may be as a comment from me or from someone else, depending on whether I'm able to get back online today.

Oh well, I’m sure it will all work out in the wash.

Happy scavenging!

Little Miss Autoimmune :-)

I'm a bit of a liar :-)

Often when people find out I have arthritis, they say something along the lines of "Is that very painful?" or "That must be really difficult." My response is usually along the lines of "Oh, no, it's fine." or "Oh, you know. It's not too bad."

That is a lie!

Living with arthritis is incredibly hard. It's not one big difficult thing, it's 1 million small difficult things. Arthritis makes everything hard. Even something as simple as brushing my hair, can be a huge struggle.

I've heard many times from other people with autoimmune arthritis how frustrating they find the misconceptions people have about arthritis. I realised, I'm probably contributing to those misconceptions by downplaying how bad it is.

Of course, this doesn't mean I'm going to go out and complain for half an hour every time someone asks me if it's painful, but I could say something like: "It's very painful, but I cope with it." or "Yeah, it is difficult, but it's part of my life and I deal with it as best I can."

Buckle Me Up http://www.iaamovement.org/ have suggested that instead of saying we have 'arthritis', we say we have 'autoimmune arthritis.' Hopefully, that way, instead of getting the standard response of "but you're too young to have arthritis" or "my mum has that - she takes ibuprofen" people will ask "what's autoimmune arthritis?" If enough people start saying this and follow it up with a quick explanation about the difference between autoimmune forms of arthritis and degenerative forms, it won't be long until we don't need that explanation any more.

Little Miss Autoimmune

I get a stomach ulcer and positivity goes out the window...

Well, it's all pretty much there in the title. I found out yesterday I have a stomach ulcer.

I've had symptoms for a few months, but didn't really take much notice. I had a persistent stomach ache, but I put that down to being anxious, or having indigestion, or being hungry (despite the fact that eating made the pain worse.) It wasn't really a problem until about a week ago when the pain became unbearable and I had times where I couldn't stop dry wretching.

It was probably unfortunate that I had blogged about positivity a few days before, because I did not feel very positive at that point. Fortunately for everyone else, I lost my voice on the same day, so I was not terribly vocal about my lack of positivity. A wee bit of it did come out via the internet though.

Oh, that reminds me... I've found this great fibro group on facebook. http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-Fibromyalgia-Fun-House/153222891381838
I don't know how to do that thing where you put the name of something, and that's the link itself, but this should hopefully work. They've been really lovely to talk to, and gave me some great advice, so thank you to them.
Oh, and while we're on the facebook thing, I now have a Little Miss Autoimmune facebook page. There's a link to it above... or maybe to the left... I'm not sure where exactly it's going to be in relation to this post, but I've sure you'll be able to find it if you'd like to.

So, anyway, back to my point. I have a stomach ulcer. It's not as serious as it could be because there's no signs of it bleeding, so that's really good. Unfortunately, it's most likely caused by my arthritis medication, which may mean I will have to come off it. I'm hoping not, as I can't really move without it. The doctor said the medication he's given me to repair the damage can also protect from further damage, so I may just have to stay on it long term. From what I've read, autoimmune arthritis itself can be a contributing factor, but I read that on the internet so I don't know if it's accurate.

It's weird, because I when the pain got bad last week I jokingly said I thought I was developing an ulcer. Then I googled the symptoms and causes and went, hey, maybe I am actually developing an ulcer.

As you might have guessed, this isn't really a proper post. It's kind of just an update to explain why I'm not doing a proper post this week.

Back to regular programming next week.

:-) Little Miss Autoimmune

Positivity

A couple of weeks back I had an appointment with my Rheumy. It had been about a year and a half since I'd had an appointment with him (I'd just had phone consultations and appointments with my nurse in that time) and I had this idea that at the appointment he'd be able to give me some magic fix.

Think again.

Basically he said there are very few medical options left for me. My only options were to go on strong painkillers or to try some psychological approaches.

I've said pretty much right off the bat, with my diagnosis, that I didn't want painkillers. I'm not opposed to taking the occasional panadol, but even then I only want to take them when I absolutely have to. In the past my nurse has told me I should be taking it every four hours but that's just not something I want to do. I don't want opiates messing with my head, and I don't want to have to rely on pills to be able to function.

So, we discussed the psychological approaches. My Rheumy was careful to explain that he was not suggesting my pain was in my head, or that I could be "talked" out of feeling pain. This was more about finding ways to live with the pain and achieve my goals despite it. I was a little put off by the fact that the group therapy he was recommending to me was called "Dare to Change." This, to me, implies that they think I'm reluctant to change or that I'm resistant to the idea. Actually, I also think it implies that I need to change my attitude, but personally I think I have a pretty good attitude.

Not long after I was diagnosed I read a couple of articles about chronic pain patients. One said that although things will be more difficult to do when you have chronic pain, you shouldn't stop trying to do them. Yes, you could sit around saying 'well, it's too hard. I'm in too much pain. People shouldn't expect too much of me,' and a lot of that would be true. But how would that feel? Wouldn't it feel so much better to figure out a new way to go about achieving your dreams? Achievements feel so much better than excuses.

At first, I didn't understand what they meant by 'finding a new way.' It sounded kind of new age-y. Then I thought about it. I want to be a writer, but what happens in the months when I my joints get so bad I can't type? Instead of not writing at all (which a times, I admit, I do) I break out the voice software, or the pen, or the friend to dictate to and keep going. That is my new way to achieve my dreams.

That doesn't mean I'm going to go off and work a forty hour week. There is just no way I could do that without ending up in hospital, so it's not just about finding a new way to achieve your goals - it's about working out how realisitc they are. All my life I wanted to be an actor/filmmaker. After my diagnosis, it became harder and harder to work towards this goal. I ended up sitting down, and working out what it was about acting and filmmaking that I liked. I realised it was telling stories that I liked, and writing seemed like a much better fit for me.

The other article talked about how, in general, chronic pain patients have unreasonable expectations that their pain will get better (that's kind of complicated wording, but I wasn't sure how to phrase it. Hopefully you can figure out what I mean.) This could have been really depressing, and for a while it was. I had, up until that point, thought I just had to find the right medication and all my pain would go away. I hadn't realised that even on the best medications, I might never be completely pain-free. Weirdly enough, reading that article was a wake up call for me. I had, up until then, been thinking, 'when the pain goes away, then I'll loose some weight. When the pain goes away, then I'll find a job. When the pain goes away, then I'll write that novel.' That thought pattern had to stop. I had to work out how I was going to live a fulfilling and happy life, even if the pain had to live it with me.

Sometimes, positivity is for other people's benefit. I don't think it would be much fun to be friends with me if I was constantly complaining about how awful I feel, or just generally being miserable. On the other hand, keeping a positive attitude does help me too. The more I focus on the fact that I'm in pain, the more I feel the pain, so being able to laugh and joke about stuff is a good distraction. It also helps that I find life incredibly funny, and therefore find the more ridiculous aspects of my ill health pretty funny too. At times, I think it confuses people when I laugh about the fact that I fell over in my driveway and couldn't get up, or passed out in the middle of the supermarket, but you know what? It really does come down to laugh or cry, and personally I choose to laugh (at least around other people anyway.)

:-) Little Miss Autoimmune

There's only so long you can be a bitch...

When I was first diagnosed with arthritis I was a bitch. Hmm... that kind of sounds like I was a bitch and then I got diagnosed and I wasn't anymore. What I mean is, in the first few weeks after I was diagnosed, I was so depressed and angry, I was a bitch to pretty much everyone I came in contact with.

To put this in prespective, I was diagnosed on New Years Eve. I'd planned to go to a New Years party that night. When we got out of the doctor's office that day my Mum told me alcohol was probably not going to be very good for me, but that to make myself feel better I should go out and get drunk (to this day I'm not sure whether she was joking.) I'm not really a big drinker, so this was pretty unusual advice, but I took it and spent the New Years countdown drunk and crying in my friend's stairwell.

But. There is only so long you can be a bitch.

A little while back my supervisor at work was having problems with her knee. She said being in pain was making her grumpy and she didn't understand how, being in pain all the time, I wasn't a bitch all the time. The thing is, there's only so long people will forgive you for being a bitch. After that the being-in-pain excuse wears thin and you'll find you're not only in pain, but you also have no friends.

Of course, now I think I've taken it to the other extreme. I worry so much about being a burden on other people, being in other people's way or complaining too much, that I constantly apologise. Often I apologise when things aren't actually my fault, like if someone isn't looking and walks into me. I feel because I walk with a crutch surely it must be my fault somehow. The other day my friend pointed out to me that I often apologise when things aren't even a problem, like I sometimes apologise to people for standing next to them - I don't know why, I think it's a sickness.

My new solution to feeling I complain too much is to complain more but in a more obvious way. Instead of trying to hide the fact that I'm not happy I'm just going to yell out "I'M IN PAIN" and then just carry on as if I haven't said anything. My friend has also offered to complain for me at times when I get tired of complaining. That way is more fun than complaining about complaining, although saying "I'M TIRED OF COMPLAINING! MY VOICE IS SO WHINY, I CAN'T STAND IT!" would be funny too.

Little Miss Autoimmune

Useless

I had one of those ‘I am useless days today.’ Normally I’m pretty happy with what I manage to accomplish and try to take a strengths based approach to my life (looking at my skills and focusing on what I have achieved, rather than focusing on what I can’t.)

Every so often, though I have a useless day.

They always start out the same. I have one simple task to do, usually something that is going to be a little difficult for my joints, but is still totally doable. In this case, I had to make up the spare bed for my friend who’s coming to stay.

So, I make the bed. It’s a little bit of a struggle, but I do it and I’m so excited that I have accomplished something “difficult” that I’m like ‘yeah! I can totally do anything! I’m going to now change my bed and clean the bathroom and vacuum all the floors.’

I know what you’re thinking – that’s probably like just a normal weekend for most people, but when even one of these tasks causes you pain, this is a marathon.

I got as far as taking all the bedding off my bed - at which point, my arms hurt too much to pick the bedding up again. Basically at that point my solution to the problem was to just stand there in the middle of the pile of bedding feeling sorry of myself. Fortunately, this turned out to be a solution in itself. After a while, my Dad came to check on me, saw the sorry state I was in and decided to make my bed for me.

Now, the sensible thing to do at this point would have been to give up on the idea of vacuuming and cleaning the bathroom, but no, I continued on with my plan. The bathroom turned out to not really need cleaning, as it had been done a couple of days before, it was more just a case of tidying up, so I moved on to vacuuming.

The sensible thing to do would have been to pick out the rubbish on my floor before trying to vacuum, but I was pretty tired and felt like cutting corners.

I managed to vacuum up some receipts, a plastic bag and a pair of stockings I’d left on the floor. All of these were easy to retrieve, as they got stuck, but while “retrieving” them, I managed to vacuum up an ornament off my shelf. I was pretty upset about this, as it was something I’d bought at the Katherine Mansfield house when I first visited it, so I was pretty keen to get it back. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to open the vacuum. My solution was to just press every button on it, which achieved NOTHING. At this point I decided to give and put the vacuum away. Of course at this moment, it decides to not only open, but the top completely came off. More worryingly, a small piece fell out and none of it would go back together.

I could totally NOT do anything. I decided to stick to my strengths and spent the rest of the evening watching TV and eating chocolate while my day fixed the vacuum.

Little Miss Autoimmune

Big Orange Gloves

I decided a while back I would make Monday nights my blog posting day. It's worked pretty well, until tonight. I've just realised it's 9.30pm and I haven't even thought about a topic.

So I'm going to fall back on something that's been going around the New Zealand arthritis community this week. Having arthritis does not feel like wearing big orange gloves!

- For my non-New Zealand readers, this last week has been Arthritis New Zealand's appeal week. Arthritis New Zealand is a wonderful service. They've helped me so much with emotional and practical support. It's been really great over the past few years knowing that if I need help with anything, from advice on appropriate exercise programmes to getting subsidised taxi vouchers, I have someone I can call.

Unfortunately, the appeal adverts have not been so helpful.

They feature New Zealand celebrities trying to do everyday tasks while wearing big orange gloves. Everyone I've talked to agrees, arthritis does not feel like wearing big orange gloves.

For one thing, these ads have absolutely no mention of pain. Personally, I have almost full function of my hands, but that doesn't mean that they are not extremely painful. Yes, arthritis does sometimes make my hands fumbly. There are times when I can't do up zips or find using a knife and fork difficult but this is a minor irritation compared to the long list of other symptoms and difficulties that come with the disease. For me, things like, not being able to put my socks on myself, not being able to pick up things if I drop them, not being able to walk/get up and down from chairs un-aided would be more relevant. Then of course there is the pain and the things that go along with constantly being in pain. Lack of sleep, inability to concentrate, general exhaustion and floods of emotion.

Too many people already think that arthritis is just something you get in your hands. I do give the campaign credit for using younger celebrities. This at least hints at the fact that arthritis is not only a condition you get as you age.

I don't know if it's possible for a 30second ad to really explain what it is like to have arthritis. Even as I read over this post I'm thinking I haven't really captured it. For people who haven't experience long-term pain, it's probably quite difficult to imagine what it's like. I guess what I'd really like to see in an arthritis campaign is people with arthritis telling their stories. Maybe next year, Arthritis New Zealand can do some ads similar to the Like Minds ads (people with experience of mental illness telling their stories.) I know those ads have helped with people's understanding of mental illness. It's time for people's understanding of arthritis to change too.

Little Miss Autoimmune