Sausage Fingers

Sausages do not bend. Not easily anyway. Wrapping my fingers into a balled fist every morning gives me a good indicator as to how my morning is going to go. Are my joints just stiff, or is there the burning sensation of a flare up to accompany the stiffness? For the first hour in the morning, there is certainly no confidence in my fist's ability to grip anything.

To think I tried to take up golf last summer. Ha! But that my friends is a story for another day...

When the arthritis in my joints flares up, I often refer to my fingers as sausages. It sounds like a description a writer would use to describe a short, fat man's hands in a novel, but it is an apt description for this thirty-five year old, petite blonde, Psoriatic Arthritis sufferer's hands too, my poor fingers inflamed, red, and swollen, kinda useless. Sometimes they are breakfast sausages, sometimes they are those hot and spicy foot-long Polish sausages we buy at our local European Deli down the street.

I write about Sausage Fingers as an introduction to my new blog. For months I have been meaning to start a diary of sorts to keep track of diet, alcohol and caffeine intake, exercise, and weather patterns to see if I can distinguish my inflammation triggers. So here it is. I hope that by keeping a blog about my experiences with Psoriatic Arthritis in co-relation to my lifestyle will motivate me to continue in my quest for the healthiest life I can possibly live. And I hope to share any successes I have in learning to cope with the effects of the disease and minimizing the inflammation with other suffers also looking for ideas for relief.

Perhaps one day I will once again feel healthy enough to attempt to swing a golf club. I mean Phil Mickelson is a pro golfer who has been diagnosed with Psoriatic Arthritis and he seems to be doing just fine for himself on the golf course.