Month: April 2015

Ever had a headache that just wouldn’t go away?

I’m the kind of guy that doesn’t like to take any drugs (well, more than I absolutely have to).  When I do get a headache it will normally go away in time.  Once in a while, one will be camped out for the long haul.

I had one such headache, not long ago, that I just couldn’t get rid of.  My entire head hurt from front to back and behind my eyes.

I woke up with it but it really wasn’t that bad.  As the day progressed the pain increased more and more.  By the time I left work I just wanted to go to bed.  When I arrived home that’s exactly what I did to see if I could just sleep it off.

When I woke up the next morning it was still going full force.

As I sat at my work desk I was thinking ‘I don’t want to be here’.  I was completely miserable.  I’m sure you’ve been there before, too.  Needless to say I wasn’t getting a whole lot accomplished.

When I looked at my shirt pocket and saw my Anion Emitter I thought, ‘DUH!’  Remember that pen looking thing I’ve talked about?  I remember being told that this emitter can help get rid of headaches since it reduces inflammation.

I almost smacked myself on the forehead but I resisted because I didn’t want my head to hurt more than it already did.

Okay, my head has been hurting for over 24 hours and it didn’t seem like the pain was about to go away any time soon on its own.  I grabbed that emitter and started waving it around my head.  I did this for about 30 minutes and my arm was getting tired so I stopped.  I wonder what people would have thought if they saw me waving a pen around my head. 😀  My head wasn’t starting to feel any better so I figured it was a useless attempt to help the pain.

Have you ever noticed that you can tell, right away, when something starts to hurt but yet when the pain goes away, little-by-little, that you really don’t pay any attention to the fact that it’s gone?

I sat at my desk working on the computer for about another 30 minutes and I completely forgot about my pain because I didn’t notice that it had slowly gone away.  When I did realize my head didn’t hurt any more I was just dumbfounded.  I couldn’t believe it!  I had suffered for an entire day and this weird little pen thing just helped my headache go away.

I do have to say that it hasn’t made ALL of my headaches go away.  I’m not a doctor so I’m not familiar with the various causes of headaches and I can’t make recommendations on how to treat your headache.  I just know that whenever my head starts to hurt I’m waving this little ‘magic wand’ around the area that hurts just to see if it helps.

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On a off-the-wall side note…

While I was researching headaches and their causes, I came across one article that described what’s called Sex Headaches.  I thought, you’ve got to be kidding!  People get headaches caused by having sex?

Maybe I’ll strap an emitter on my head from now on, just in case….  😉

 

This product has not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

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How about an RA drive-by attack?

Rheumatoid Arthritis is a systemic disease, meaning it invades the entire system(body).  If you have RA you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say that it can decide to settle in any joint of the body at any time.

One day it’s in the shoulder.  The next day it’s the knee or both knees.  Virtually everyday it’s in the hands, especially when you first wake up.  Today, it’s in my hip.

Many times I’ve just been walking along and a nice ol’ jab of pain will hit my hip, almost causing me to fall down due to the pain.  No warning.  No aching.  Just a knife being shoved into my hip.

My RA likes to remind me that we’re constant companions and that he goes wherever I go.

Fortunately, I have my Anion Emitter with me.  This thing is just amazing.  I don’t think I can count how many times this has reduced or eliminated the pain I experience due to my RA.  I’ve shown this to several people and have loaned it out so others can experience the amazing effects this has on inflammation based pain.

When ‘Arthur’ decides to hit my hip like this I simply slide my emitter into my pocket and attach the clip.  This positions the emitter right next to my hip joint and the pain begins to subside within a few minutes.

I recall the first time I tried this.  I was walking down the hallway at work and a sudden shot of pain penetrated my hip joint.  It was quite surprising how forceful it felt.  I didn’t know if the emitter would help but I slid it into my pocket and within one minute I could tell a definite difference.

I was completely amazed!

These Juuva products keep impressing me more and more on what they do.

 

This product has not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

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Would you pull that knife out of my knee, please?

I used to live in Japan so I like to sit on the floor with my legs tucked under me.  Whenever I want to sit on the floor and work on something I’m usually sitting like that.

Well, a few years ago I started having an extra amount of pain in my right knee, more than my normal RA stuff.  When I would sit, Japanese style, a knife would be shoved into my knee right when I would sit down.  Once I was down the pain would ease off within a couple of seconds.

Once I was there and the pain was gone, things were okay.  The problem, though, was the longer I sat there the more my knee would ‘freeze’ up.  When I would try to stand back up it hurt like crazy to get my leg straight again.

It got to where I was reluctant to sit like that because I didn’t want that sudden burst of pain.

I decided to try a little experiment…

You see, I have a business that markets something called an Anion Emitter.  It has rare earth minerals and semi-precious crystals (like Watermelon Tourmaline and Zeolite).  This Emitter helps reduce inflammation.  I keep at least one attached to the back of my pants to help with my back pain.  These minerals and crystals are, also, contained in what’s called a Cation Shield.  These are little button looking things that attach to electronic devices, like cell phones, to help with the potential harmful effects from the electrical magnetic energy (EMF’s) they emit.

Anyway, these shields have the same inflammation reducing ingredients in them that the emitter has.  I decided to buy a knee brace that has a hole for the knee cap.  I had my wife sew four little pockets to the inside of the knee brace, around the hole.  Then she slipped a shield inside each pocket and sewed it closed.

I started wearing the knee brace 24/7.  After about two weeks I noticed a significant difference in the amount of pain I experienced when I would sit on the floor.  I wasn’t sure if this would help with my knee pain but I am quite impressed with how well it’s working.

Now, I can kneel down with hardly any pain and can sit for as long as I wish without my knee freezing up on me.

 

These products have not been evaluated by the FDA. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

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Arthritis – “Painfull inflammation and stiffness of the joints”.

My story of contracting Rheumatoid Arthritis.  The start of a journey that will redefine virtually every aspect of my life.

Hi, I’m Ronald.  Fancy meeting you here.

As of this writing, I’m 53 years old.  I would consider myself to be an average guy, sort of a jokester(I like making people smile) and I have Rhuematoid Arthritis.

I believe that most people who have any form of arthritis would say they have no idea just WHEN they contracted the disease.  Most of the time it just sneaks up on you and one day, you realize that you hurt more than you should.  As for me, that wasn’t the case.  It all happened in one night…

Life changed for me, rather suddenly, in February of 1989 in a single night.  I remember it all so well.  I can’t remember the pain of all of the scrapes and cuts I’ve had throughout my life but I remember, quite vividly, the pain I experience when Arthur (my arthritis) decided to make my body his home.  I’ve been told that women forget how intense the pain is when they have a baby, that’s why they’re willing to have another one.  HAHA.  But, after all this time that memory is still very vivid.  Even now, as I’m typing this, it’s getting quite emotional for me….

February, 1989…

I’m working night shift.  We’re on 12 hour shifts, 6:00 – 6:00.  I’ve been fighting colds for about three months now.  I’d be sick for a couple of weeks then okay for a week.  Sick for a couple of weeks and okay for a week.  I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Well, it’s 2am and I’m feeling like I’m coming down with something again.  Nuts!  You know how it is.  You start feeling achey, throat is getting scratchy and just feeling all bleh.  At 4am I’m really starting to hurt, all over.  I’m starting to think this isn’t just another cold coming on.

It’s 6am (quitting time) and my whole body is on fire.  As I walk outside, I find out it has snowed about eight inches.  Great!  Now I get to scrape the snow off my car while I’m in agony.  Just moving my arm sends searing pain into my shoulder and I have no clue of what’s going on.

Luckily, I only have one mile to drive home.  As I climb up the stairs to our 4-plex apartment, I’m crying from all of the pain.  I open the door just sobbing and my wife asks what’s wrong.  I relate to her what’s been going on and we decide I need to go see a doctor.  Well, DUH!

It’s funny how we expect doctors to know everything.

“Hey Doc, I have this ‘thing’ going on.  What it is”?  After a rather lengthy visit I realized not much was accomplished.  He had no clue why I’m in so much pain.  He just prescribed 800mg of ibuprofen to help ease the pain.  I think I could have used something a lot stronger, at this moment, to ease what I was feeling.  By-the-way, the ibuprofen didn’t help at all.

I was told to call a Rheumatologist.  Yeah, like I know what a Rheumatologist is….  Soonest opening is in two days, an eternity.  So, now all I do is wait for that appointment while I have no idea of what’s going on.

Here’s the fun part….

It hurts to move and I mean it hurts.  If I sit still the pain’s not quite as bad.  Problem is, if I sit still my joints start to ‘freeze’ up and it hurts even more to break them loose than it does to move around.  So here I am with a delema.  Do I endure the constant pain of moving around or do I sit still so I don’t hurt as much and then have the excruciating pain of breaking loose when I do need to move?

The next morning my wife had to pull me out of bed.  We had a water bed (it was the cool thing to have at the time) and it was impossible for me to climb out.  When I shimmied out to the front room I started feeling a bit queezy so I laid down on the edge of the couch.  I’d been there for several minutes until I started feeling better.  When I tried to get up I realized I was stuck.  I hurt so bad that I couldn’t even make myself push through the pain to simply roll off the couch.  Rather pathetic, don’t you think?  LOL

OK, I’m finally at the Rheumatologist.  I’m sitting in the waiting area with all of these old people (remember, I’m only 27).  But, when they called me to come back I think I moved like I was older than all of them.  They had me fill out this huge questionaire.  I checked the box that said it burned when I urinated.  Well, it did.  I guess when the doctor saw that he came right back in and asked me how long I had been experiencing that.  I told him just since I’ve been hurting all over.  A while later I realized he must have thought I had prostate cancer and wondered if all of my pain was  being caused by my body being full of cancer.  I wasn’t sure which I would have rather had, at the time.

They took a few gallons of blood (okay, not quite that much) to run tests on and said they would let me know when the results were in.

More waiting….

I got a call to come back in and I was told that I have Rheumatoid Arthritis.  I’m thinking GREAT!  I have something that old people get, now what?  The doctor told me about something called a SED rate (stands for Sedimentation rate).  He said that indicates how much inflamation is in the body.  He told me the normal person’s level should be at zero.  Mine was at 32.

I’ve researched the definition of SED rates at various medical web sites and they indicate that people can be between 0 – 20 and be a normal level.  Pffft!  Knowing what my levels have been and reading that I can confidently say that 20 is not a normal level.  I’ve been at 19 during one of my checkups and I was hurting.

The doctor gave me two double dose shots of a steroid in each butt cheek.  Man, talk about having a huge knot in each one.  They hurt like crazy.  “Just rub them in”, he says.  Yeah right, rub on something that hurts.  Good idea.  LOL.

The doctor, also, sends me home with a couple of prescriptions, one is an NSAID(Voltaren) and the other is a steroid(Medrol).  He has me on a fairly good size dose of the steroid.  Not knowing any better I take it without any issue.  Too bad it isn’t the kind that would get me all buffed up.  HA!

So, here I am just waiting for the medication to kick in.  I’m back to my walking/sitting routine.  Not able to go to work so all I have to think about is this crummy situation I’m in.  Times like this a person gets to feeling rather pitiful for themselves.  I can’t run away from my problem.  I have this new friend that calls himself ‘Arthur’ that will be my life-long buddy that goes everywhere I do whether or not I want him around.

I guess a person could start wondering what they had done to deserve something like this.  Luckily, I’m not the kind to stray toward that.  Crap happens, deal with it.  Humor has always been my way of dealing with things.  So, I guess I started telling a lot of jokes about now.

It took several weeks for my inflammation/pain to get down to a manageable level.  The Rheumatologist gave me a couple more steroid shots in the butt to help things simmer down.  Eventually, I was weaned off of the medrol and the voltaren is the only Rx that I’m taking.

I had heard of people aching whenever a storm approaches.  I didn’t really understand this until my RA hit me.  I’ve talked with several people that have broken a bone and has since healed.  They indicated to me that the healed area tends to ache whenever a storm approaches.  I became my own weather forcaster as I’m sure you could relate.  About a day-and-a-half before the storm front hits my joints begin to ache.  I didn’t figure it out for a while but after a several storms I started to do an ‘ah-hah’.  What would really hurt is if several storm fronts came over a day or two apart.  That’s when the aching turned to burning.

Now, 26 years later, I look back on how things have changed because I have this systemic disease that tries to remind me it’s here every day.  I’ve read that having constant pain can cause a person’s tolerance for pain to go down.  Quite the contrary, I believe that mine may have gone up.  I do believe that my patience has greatly increased.  It does take me longer to do certain things.

In a big nut shell…

There’s my story of contracting Rheumatoid Arthritis.  I’ve had many ups and downs while dealing with RA.  One good thing about it hitting me in one night is that Arthur didn’t have time to deform my joints before I realized what he was doing.  I have friends that weren’t so lucky and they deal with the challenge their hands pose due to being damaged.

I hope you stay tuned because I’d like to visit more about the pain caused by arthritis and inflammation, in general.  I’ve discovered several things that have reduced my aches and pains and want to share them with you.

P.S.  Smile, people will wonder what you’ve been up to…

 

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