Letting it All Hang Out

After years of living a life with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (JRA) I’m at a point where I want to share that Journey. So many things have prompted me to want to share my story recently. First of all I’m finally comfortable and feel like I’m controlling my arthritis instead of it controlling me. Secondly it has started affecting many different aspects of my life which has pissed me off enough to really want to get full control over the JRA. I’ve also run out of options for westernized treatments so I want to get my story out so I can offer advice to those that are experiencing the same thing and hopefully I can gain knowledge as well. I will probably have many purposes to this blog as I’m kind of random in my thoughts and I really enjoy a lot of different things in life. Arthritis is one of the things that makes me who I am but there are many other things like my love for baking, camping, family, crafting(thanks pinterest!), working….

My main focus of the blog will be how I’m treating my JRA, Ulceritive Colitis and infertility with supplements and food. The three are all connected in some way and my theory along with my practitioner’s theory is it all starts at the gut. If my gut can be happy then the rest of my body can be happy. I have added a ton of supplements, so may in fact that my pill box is overflowing and I have to upgrade to the mega size. I’m also working…well trying to work on cutting out sugar, gluten, alcohol (insert sad face here) and some dairy. Ok so this may seem simple to some but I dare you to try it! It sucks! Especially after living the last almost 29 years surrounded by food filled with sugar, flour and dairy. Also the fact that my favorite thing to do and the biggest stress reliever in my life is to bake. So here I am not very good at chemistry and for some reason it seems like you need a minor in chemistry to bake with the different types of wheat free flours, honey, stevia sugars, blah blah blah. So I’m here to use the world through technology to learn how I can accomplish my favorite tasks using things that will “cure” me, hopefully! Thankfully I’m living in a time where these types of (fill in the blank) free diets are becoming more common.

So a little history about me…I’m a 28, almost 29 year old from good ol’ Minnesota. I was diagnosed with JRA at the age of 2 and lost the vision in my right eye at the age of 3 due to the JRA. Life with out having to see a physician every three months and having vision in both of my eyes just doesn’t seem normal to me. So growing up with JRA was normal most of the time and not so much some of the time. Flair ups here and there otherwise for the most part it was pretty good. I graduated from high school and went on to do way too many years in college to get a degree in Social Work. Of course I ended up working in a nursing home as I love the medical field but don’t exactly want to work in a hospital. I love my job! During college I met my husband Jim and we had a surprise when I was 23 that we were going to have a baby! We had Alex in March of 2007 which turned out to be the greatest gift ever! I love being a mom, it is so much fun to watch him grow up. For the last 2.5 years we have been trying to add to our family. Infertility is the worst thing someone could ever go through. I have never experienced heart break like this. Not a whole lot of people know that about us so here it is world…we can’t get pregnant to save our life’s! I blame the infertility on the JRA. I’m trying to fix the JRA so I can then fix the infertility problem.

If you choose to follow this blog you will hopefully learn a lot about homeopathic remedies, amazing recipes, the ups and downs of living with an autoimmune disorder, infertility and balancing a full time job and a family on top of that...oh yeah and maybe some things I learned about from pinterest too! All while having what I consider a fabulous freaking outlook on life, good personality and a great sense of humor. I’ll complain sometimes but I can then pull up my big girl panties and move on, complaining isn’t going to get me anywhere except down. I welcome you to my Journey!

This is Jim, Alex and I on Christmas of 2011