Category Archives: Charis

Charis, Current Events, family, Grief, Oriental NC, Politics, Relationships

Walmart’s Little Experiment Screwed My Hometown

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20160202_165125In recent days headlines have announced Walmart’s decision to close their experimental neighborhood stores just a few years after the pilot program began. For many this is just another announcement of a mega-retailer changing strategy in order to improve profits. But what is a small failure to Walmart has huge, real-life impacts on the small towns where many of these neighborhood stores were built. A few examples are Oriental, NC; Redwater, TX; Chicago, IL; and Rose Hill, Kansas. People lost jobs, but not before many towns lost their locally owned, family run grocery stores and pharmacies that had adequately served the same community through thick and thin for decades.

In Oriental, Town N Country, in business over 40 years, held on as long as possible against the monopoly and sadly closed at the end of October, 2015, less than three months before news came that the Walmart neighborhood market would be closing. Oriental is a quaint fishing village with a lot of quirky retired people.  We didn’t make national news, but now we’re left with no grocery store and no pharmacy in our village of 900 people.  Our marriage with Walmart cannot be annulled and it came with no prenuptial agreements, so we are left to deal with the mess left on our doorstep. Continue reading Walmart’s Little Experiment Screwed My Hometown →

#sickbody, ankylosing spondylitis, Arthritis, Charis, chronic disease, chronic pain, health, Invisible disease, poetry, spondyloarthritis, Survivor

Holding Hands With the Reaper

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People tell me I should smile more.

But look inside me.

My toes. My toes point soundly forward in shoes that should have my prescription orthotics in them.  I choose not to because I’m 28 and I’m wearing heels as long as I can, so I can feel the “normal” parts of my 20s – and choose pain that I cause myself, thank you very much. I want reminders in 5 years that I could pass as someone my age.  Right now my toes are sound.  I trust my toes, most of the time.

My plantar fascias are aching. They threaten to cramp most nights as I lie in bed, still awake after hours of restlessness.  They ache and throb as if my heart itself has moved to the bottom of my feet. I ask a lot of my feet. These feet hold me in place as I struggle against the rest of me to cook, bathe, check the mail, pedal my bike, press the sewing machine pedal, and occasionally walk in high fashion runway shows.

Though I’m largely unaware of the pain until I pop my ankles, they remain stiff all the time. I rotate my feet clockwise and counterclockwise, back and forth in quick rhythm, in attempt to loosen my ankles and rice krispies happen.  You know, snap, crackle, and pop. Rice Krispies don’t hurt, but my joints do. How can these sounds accompany so much hidden pain that suddenly takes the red carpet?

My knees are chronically, invisibly enlarged from years of soccer and running long before I knew why my injuries were so intense, why they didn’t heal like they should. My quads and hamstrings play injury-tennis, back and forth. The pain is in your court now, left hammie. My weakened muscles are constantly overcompensating for what my body can’t naturally do: fight inflammation, toxins created by overuse, expectant injury, and scarred tissues and bone spurs.  Instead, my body fights my joints as if they are alien matter. Continue reading Holding Hands With the Reaper →

#sickbody, Advocacy, ankylosing spondylitis, Charis, chronic disease, chronic pain, disability, Patient Advocacy

Patient Advocacy & Courage; Becoming a Voice For Many

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Do you know how much courage it takes to tell 200 strangers it hurts to have sex?  Courage.

Continue reading Patient Advocacy & Courage; Becoming a Voice For Many →

#sickbody, Advocacy, ankylosing spondylitis, Charis, chronic disease, chronic pain, disability, public speaking

I Said “Yes” to Big Pharma

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I didn’t want to start this blog.  I knew it would get me in trouble.  The kind of trouble that puts me in front of a crowd of 200 people from around the world to talk about what it’s like to live with Ankylosing Spondylitis.  I’m in trouble. Big time.

I didn’t want to dive into something bigger than I could handle – something that had the potential to amplify my voice into something like…well, like this conference I’m going to in San Francisco the first weekend in November. I’ve really done it now.

Continue reading I Said “Yes” to Big Pharma →