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Patients don’t just need good care, THEY NEED EACH OTHER!
The Spondylitis Association of America (SAA) is the patient organisation in the USA for people like me. Its vision is of “a world free from the pain and disability of ankylosing spondylitis and related diseases.” and its mission is: To be a leader in the quest to cure ankylosing spondylitis and related diseases, and to…
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An unhealthy health care reform in Switzerland, part 2
In my last blog I wrote about the Swiss healthcare reform which is proposed by the Swiss Council of ministers and about a controversial measure to introduce budget limits to outpatient healthcare, putting expenditure limits on treatment. The details are explained in my last blog. This measure is almost universally opposed by those affected: by…
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Another Patient Journey: 2019 was a good year
Picking up the story from my last blog Was 2019 really that bad? my doctors advised that I should stop the TNF blocker drugs, that had enabled me to live a normal life for the past three years, before undergoing cancer surgery. That made sense. These drugs work by dampening the immune system. I could…
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Was 2019 really that bad?
If you’d told me in March 2019 that I wouldn’t write another blog on “arthritis and me” until 2020, I would have laughed and said you didn’t know me! I had started two new drafts. They will be finished one day, but first I have to write about breast cancer and get that off my…
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Am I really what I eat?
In the bad old days when life seemed to be filled only with pain, I used to comfort myself and find moments of peace with the thought: „I am not my body!“ If I could see myself at a level of consciousness where my soul and not my body was in charge, then the pain…
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What keeps me healthy?
In Switzerland we believe that foxes are clever. Near the village where I live there is a family of foxes living on the border between the woods and a corn field, and in Spring the young foxes come out and play in the evenings. Last year I managed to get a picture, which I’d like…
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Fatigue, Friends and other F-words
It’s been so long since my last blog. What happened to my intention to write every two weeks? What’s being going on? Well, I’ve been busy – read on and find out! – and if I’ve not been busy, I’ve been exhausted and dragging myself from one task to the next. Those who suffer from…
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Back home
Reflections on life since the mountain tour to Monte Rosa. The final day was so long: we’d started well before dawn and arrived at the Gornergrat railway to head home in the early evening. But surprisingly, the first three days after the tour I was still sort of high, and full of energy. Then on…
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16 x 4,000m summits in 5 days
Only 18 months after requiring a wheelchair at the airport, I have accomplished my dream of climbing several of Switzerland’s highest peaks – 16 in all – in only five days. I was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) two years ago, and wrote about coming to terms with the diagnosis in a first post, and…
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Journey is destination
What’s next With the help of a new medical treatment, my health had improved beyond recognition. However, I did feel that this drug regime was not the whole solution, because I still had aches in my back and other joints sometimes, which showed that AS hadn’t been stopped entirely. When I took up sport again,…
A life free from the burdens of rheumatic disorders
