Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) affects 1.5 million Americans and some of those are teachers, like myself, who are teaching with rheumatoid arthritis. Let me give you a little background; my name is Tiffany and I’ve been teaching high school for seven years and I was diagnosed...
Key players in the body’s defenses, macrophages are immune cells that swallow bacteria, viruses or infectious germs. When the body comes under attack, these white blood cells engulf the attackers and eliminate the threat. Like characters in a Pac-Man video game, they roam the body,...
Remember when you were younger and someone would ask you, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” A typical response would be an astronaut, cowboy, policeman, actress, teacher or princess. However, for me, because of my chronic illness, my response was a...
For Erik Vick, an author and self-described “chainsaw-wielding Viking”, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is just another villain to defeat. This beast he battles has tried to take many things away from him, but writing and humor are two things he refuses to give up without a...
Jim Nollsch and Hayden Fisher have been named as the newest additions to the Cure Arthritis Ambassadors. Jim Nollsch and Hayden Fisher are the co-founders of the Blue Sky Cup, an annual event in Vail, Colorado, where teams compete to ski up to 40,000 vertical...
Rheumatoid arthritis is currently an incurable disease that is very difficult to manage. I have no doubt that my story is not unique. In my 24 years of living with arthritis I have never experienced such improved changes in my disease activity as I have...
I’ve lived with autoimmune arthritis for 50 years. For most of that time, no treatment existed, which is why I had to start using a power wheelchair at age 16. In the past two decades, massive advances have been made in research and treatment, enabling...
Growing up, I remember doing class assignments that asked us where we envisioned our lives to be in five, ten, twenty years. Being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) at eighteen and having a total knee replacement at twenty-nine years old was not on my radar. My...
Scientists are diligently studying our immune systems to find what starts rheumatoid arthritis (RA). So how does RA start? To find out we need to begin by understanding a little about our immune system. Our immune system has evolved to be complicated because the immune...
One of the best feelings in the world is the warmness you feel when a dog curls up next to you on the couch and lays her head and legs on your lap. Some might see this as a means of affection, but to me,...