Blocking a Shawl and Unblocking Health Care

I start every day with breakfast and pills.  While I am waiting for the pills to do their thing, I get my first look at morning email.   My method of attack is to first scan the whole list and wipe out the junk – solicitations, sale notices, friending notes from Facebook, spam that the filter missed, [...]

Rockstar

Every now and then I find myself in a group of folks who lament the income and respect disparity between celebrities and more essential pros like teachers.  We talk about how nurses are underpaid relative to football players, and the value of a good social worker versus a good television evangelist. 
During these conversations I inevitably [...]

Riverbend and Early Rising

It is the end of Riverbend Festival week in Chattanooga.  The festival lasts 10 days, and attracts tens of thousands to its varied musical performances.  Even in years when I choose to avoid the heat and crowds, I can feel the excitement in the air.  Traffic patterns change, new faces appear in familiar places, television coverage [...]

Inflammatory Knitting

I’ve been smiling since noon yesterday.  I feel wickedly happy, because I outsmarted the lupus and recognized that my terrible pain last week was unresolved inflammation.  I began the week with bad foot and back pain, and nothing was improving it.  I had my mind fixed on the recent rheumatology visit, where my doc noted [...]