In Memory of a True Rheumatoid Warrior

A Mentor of mine, Kathy Jensen, passed away last week. As I sit here and reflect on the little bit of time I knew her, I don't think she'd want me drone on about who preceded her in death or about a beloved chihuahua named Bruno.

I know that even the little I knew her cannot be summed up in a blog post or a couple paragraphs. However, I want to say her energetic efforts as Vice President of Programs at the Denver office of the Arthritis Foundation without a doubt improved the lives of many people. Her numerous outreach programs, advocacy for funding and work for access to health care for people with arthritis was nothing short of amazing. Kathy went out of her way to help people, whether it be buying soda for a weekly support group or buying me pizza to talk about my future. Before and after my hip replacement, she was incredibly supportive while fighting her own disease. No one can take her place.

Due to her extensive work with people with disabilities/arthritis, Kathy watched many people without access to medical care suffer and become needlessly disfigured. It is truly a shame she did not live to see a different reality. Perhaps her life and death should be a mediation on how we as a community, as a nation, can lessen this suffering.

Kathy, this Orencia is for you!

This Is How We Do It (Alternative Version)

One of the things I face daily as an immuno suppressed person is fighting off disease. I don't know how the rest of you feel about a bunch of kids baptizing a playground with their various drips but it makes me want to wear a bio hazard suit. One of my little cousins gave me a cold and so it has required me to go into militar mode. Call me a germaphobe, paranoid, Howard Hughes esque, but years of experience/hospitalizations have taught me that microbes are smarter than I am.

So here are my new Ten Commandments of Immunosuppresion Abroad

1. Thou Shalt wear masks on any/all public transportation
2. Thou Shalt stay away from all sick people and their bathrooms
3. Thou Shalt take a taxi when sick/in arthritic flare and not complain about the money
4. Thou Shalt placate a mother of a gooey child with compliments from afar instead
5. Thou Shalt carry hand sanitizer
6. Thou Shalt go to Tio Kansas City for RX
7. Thou Shalt budget for medicine more than Diet Coke
8. Thou Shalt sleep, even though thou is young and wants to do everything everyone else dos
9. Thou Shalt eat
10. Thou Shalt ask for help walking/carrying things, even when it kills thou to


Please feel free to add your own commandments