Dancing with My Disabilities!: ATTENTION Juvenile Arthritis Bloggers: Looking for Guest Bloggers!

Blog Title: Dancing with My Disabilities! This blog was I Already Gave My Right Arm to Be Ambidextrous prior to Read My HIPS, which is now Dancing with My Disabilities. I am doing some renovating and will begin blogging for the New Year 2024. Please be patient, and please continue to support this blog as well as my other blog Chronically Mommy, which is also being renovated to be more up to date. Pass this information on to anyone that you know may be interested in knowing...To be continued...

Dancing with My Disabilities!

Title: Dancing with My Disabilities! I had my shoulder and both hips replaced, and I am changing things up a bit on this blog! I began belly dancing in 2010! Yes, you read that correctly!! I am going to be blogging about my experience as a woman with several joint diseases and conditions who had her shoulder and both hips replaced who now belly dances, dances hip hop, performs, teaches dance to children of all ages and abilities, teaches belly dance fitness classes to adult women, teaches chair belly dance movement classes to people with mobility issues and disabilities, and takes a Pure Barre class as well! I still have pain, but I want to blog about how I have fun too! Please read Chronically Mommy (chronicallymommy.blogspot.com) for info on health/pain and being a mom to a 13-year-old son. I have avascular necrosis in my shoulders, hips, and knees, psoriatic arthritis, axial spondylitis, Sjogren's, fibromyalgia, hEDS, POTS, MCAS, vascular/ocular/hemiplegic migraines, pseudotumor cerebri, trigeminal neuralgia, occipital neuralgia, endometriosis, and chronic shingles. I found out that I have autoimmune arthritis in my cervical spine and a bulging disk in my lumbar spine. Fourteen years ago, my spine orthopedic surgeon told me I had a small amount of inflammatory arthritis in my SI joint. The question was if the spinal involvement was due to Psoriatic Spondylitis, which is a more severe form of Psoriatic Arthritis or is it a new diagnosis of Ankylosing Spondylitis? Now, they have an updated term, Axial Spondylitis, which fits my symptoms and diagnostic proof. Whatever the diagnosis, the treatment will remain the same. I had my left hip replaced in 2003; my right shoulder replaced in March of 2010. I gave my right arm to be ambidextrous! LOL! Lastly, I had my right hip replaced on May 10th, 2012, and I began belly dancing two years prior to my right hip replacement surgery. Yes that's correct! I began belly dancing in 2010, just after my shoulder replacement, before my son was born. I performed for the first time in 2012, five days prior to my right hip replacement surgery. Pain is still another part of my life. It is just a question of when, where, and how much, but I would like to use this blog to write about my experience as a woman with several joint diseases and conditions who had both hips and a shoulder replaced and now spends her free time dancing, teaching, and performing! I began dancing with a troupe in February of 2014, Seshambeh Dance Company. I now take a Pure Barre class on Monday mornings, teach ballet, tap, and creative movement on Monday evenings to children of all ages and abilities, take a hip hop class with all adult women on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, teach a belly dance fitness class on Thursdays to all adult women, and teach a chair belly dance movement class to people with mobility issues and disabilities as often as I possibly can. Join me in my journey! At times, I take 16 to 20 pills a day. I give myself an injection each week on Fridays for my autoimmune/autoinflammatory arthritis diseases. Just when one thing is doing better, something else goes downhill! My attitude, however, is always going uphill! I am 49 years old, have been married for 24 years, and my husband and I adopted Mick in Dec. of 2010! I have a lot on my plate right now, but I take it one moment at a time. I believe that God will never give me more than I can handle. However, I do need to learn to ask for help sometimes instead of always doing it by myself!

Help, I need somebody,
Help, not just anybody,
Help, you know I need someone, help.

When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody's help in any way.
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured,
Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors.

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won't you please, please help me.

And now my life has changed in oh so many ways,
My independence seems to vanish in the haze.
But every now and then I feel so insecure,
I know that I just need you like I've never done before.

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won't you please, please help me.

When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody's help in any way.
But now these daya are gone, I'm not so self assured,
Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors.

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won't you please, please help me, help me, help me, oh.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

ATTENTION Juvenile Arthritis Bloggers: Looking for Guest Bloggers!

Attention Juvenile Arthritis Bloggers, Writers and Authors. Whether you have JA, are a parent of someone with JA, or care for someone with JA, I am looking for Guest Bloggers!!!! It is JA Awareness Month, and IAAM is launching its Juvenile Arthritis Awareness Movement! We'll launch this initiative on Monday July 9th so check back! Until then, a sneak preview: JA isn't the same as having Degenerative Arthritis and YOU will have the opportunity to tell the world why! Stay tuned, it's about to get goooood ;). Watch out because IAAM's new JA Campaign is gonna blow JA Awareness out of the water! In true IAAM style it will be a little out-of-the-box and will allow YOU to shine!

I am looking for Guest Bloggers to appear on both of my blogs and on IAAM's public Facebook pages. If you are interested in being a Guest Blogger, please send me a Personal Story of JA. It can be about you personally, your child, someone you know or someone you take care of. We need to spread AWARENESS so make sure your story is a true representation of a person with JA to help others understand what it is like to live with JA, to love someone with JA and to be a child with a disease that is all too often confused with what old people get.

Email your Personal Story of JA to Dana at danalm_iaam@yahoo.com and include the post title, the blog title and url. If you do not have a blog and have it in Word, then send me the Word Document. Make sure you give me your name as you would like it to be published on my blogs and the IAAM public Facebook pages. Also, please give me a couple sentences that summarize your story. I will try to publish all the stories that I receive. Thank you!

This poster was designed by IAAM for World Autoimmune Arthritis Day 2012 (held on May 20th). This JA Awareness Movement will be the 1st of many subjects we will revisit from WAAD. And you thought World Autoimmune Arthritis Day was over...pshhh, you're not getting rid of us that easily ;)

It's Time You Understood.

I want you to understand that your arthritis is not the same as mine if you tell me "I have arthritis too in my knee sometimes." That is not what I have. I have autoimmune arthritis. I have fatigue, pain, and stiffness in every joint in my body, take very serious medications like biologics which is in IV form every 4 weeks at the hospital's infusion center and chemotherapy pills. The type of autoimmune arthritis diseases that I have affects my eyes, my lungs, my heart, my skin, my ligaments, my tendons, my salivary glands, as well as my joints. Please visit www.causes.com/WorldAutoimmuneArthritisDay to donate $5 for the cause.