I am so tired of the misconception that arthritis is a disease for old people. There are so many stories on the fact that this is so untrue. One of my favorites is this one from New South Wales Young Adults With Arthritis. They also have a fun article about the perils of being involved with “Arthur.” And, one of my favorite features on the site is their section for family and partners.
Month: January 2010
Update
We’re down to the final two big-name celebrities (that I can find) with RA. Look for those sometime soon.
Jamie Farr
Farr is one of my favorite actors. He spent eleven seasons entertaining us on MASH.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Most people don’t know that Renoir had Rheumatoid Arthritis. His arthritis was some of the most crippling I’ve heard described… and yet, he managed to bring such beauty through his art.
James Coburn
If you’ve ever seen Westerns from the 1960s and 70s, you probably know this actor. He’s also in one of my favorite cult movies, Hudson Hawk (you should check it out, only if it’s so you can see David Caruso as a mime).
Camryn Manheim
Manheim is one of my favorite people. I love her acting, but I love her personal sense of responsibility to others even more.
Teaching sign language in her son Milo’s preschool class last year, Camryn Manheim felt a sharp pain in her left hand as she tried to form a word to a favorite tune. “We were singing ‘Old Mac-Donald had a farm/ E-I-E-I—ouch!’ ” she recalls. Manheim, who played attorney Ellenor Frutt in The Practice from 1997 to 2004, went to several doctors to find out what was causing the stiffness and pain in her hands. After eight months of searching, she got a surprising answer: At 44, Manheim had rheumatoid arthritis, a disease that affects about 2 million people—70 percent of them women. Finding relief through twice-weekly injections, Manheim, who lives with 4-year-old Milo in Venice, Calif., is once again swimming and Rollerblading—and hoping to help others receive a faster diagnosis than she did.
About a year and a half ago, I just wasn’t feeling myself. I was feeling aches and pains in my hands, which was upsetting to me because I’m a sign-language interpreter—I use my hands all the time. I could hold a pen or a cup of coffee, but it was difficult. I was starting to feel fatigued too. I had to have somebody run alongside Milo when he was learning to ride his bicycle without training wheels. I had somebody else in the pool with him. I had somebody else doing hula hoop with him. That’s not the kind of mother I wanted to be. I don’t know that he could tell I couldn’t be there for him as much as I would have liked—certainly not in a way that he could express. But it was clear to me and that made me sad.
So I went to an orthopedist and his response was all these little tendons in my fingers were tight. And the doctor said, “Well, maybe you’re being a little overactive with your son.” That was not the answer I wanted to hear. So he sent me to hand therapy, and I went for several months. It wasn’t really improving my hands. Then the therapist gave me hand braces that kept my fingers folded down into the palms of my hands. It didn’t help.
Her doctor then prescribed steroids.
Immediately I felt some relief because they are an anti-inflammatory. But as soon as I would go off them the swelling and the pain would return. In between all this I did Elvis [the 2005 CBS miniseries]. I took a lot of ibuprofen. But I’m an avid knuckle cracker. I tried to crack them one day and it sent the most incredible pain up my arm. I was determined to find out why I was in so much pain.
Finally, in May, she got a referral to a rheumatologist.
So I get there and he’s like, “Put the gown on.” And I said, “Why do I have to wear a gown? It’s my hands that hurt.” And I’m thinking to myself I didn’t even wear nice underwear that day. He did blood and bone density tests and took X-rays. When he told me it was rheumatoid arthritis I said that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m too young. Well, I learned I was mistaken.
I didn’t know what rheumatoid arthritis was. It just sounded bad and debilitating. But the doctor told me there had been breakthroughs. Now, twice a week I give myself a shot of a drug that reduces inflammation. I think it took about three weeks for me to notice a difference. And then I would say after about the second month I wanted to marry my doctor. What a relief! My son is 4½ now. He thinks giving me my shot is about the most fun thing in the whole wide world. Maybe he’s trying to get back at me for the toy I wouldn’t buy him because he’s always like, “Can we do it again, Mom?” He has a sense that I take medication so that I’m healthy and happy and I can be there for him.
Manheim has slimmed down visibly in the last two years.
I started to add exercise into my life and to add healthy eating and taking care of myself. I want to be a great role model for Milo in everyway, so I had to start with myself. I play racquetball, Milo and I swim, we Rollerblade, we ride bikes, we hike. I still play guitar. I feel great. You know, the thing is you have to get the proper diagnosis and then you can get the proper treatment. Then you can put it behind you and live a full and eventful life.
It is good to see that she, unlike some people, has had a great reaction to her medication and is able to live a (mostly) normal life.
Sir Christopher Lee
This well-known horror actor has been in over 250 films since 1948. It’s an amazing feat, no matter who you are, but especially for an eighty-seven-year-old man suffering from RA.
Although Lee is known to suffer from Rheumatoid Arthritis (which is one reason why his hands are rarely photographed today), at an age [87] when most performers would have already scaled back their work, Lee has virtually reinvigorated his career in the 21st century, posting featured roles in many top box office blockbusters including Sleepy Hollow (cameo), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring & The Two Towers & The Return of the King, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones & Revenge of the Sith, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, The Golden Compass, Alice in Wonderland and he provides voice work for the popular Cartoon Network animated series The Clone Wars (reprising his role as Count Dooku from the Star Wars films).
Aida Turturro
If you’ve ever watched the Sopranos, you know exactly who this fun actress is. She’s played several smaller parts in movies and turns up in interesting places – almost like an Easter egg.
“I’m lucky because my disease hasn’t progressed too far. Sometimes I have good days, sometimes I am in a lot of pain – but I never really let my RA stop me from doing the things I want to do. I know that there are a lot of people out there for whom the disease has progressed to a debilitating stage”.
Matt Iseman
This physician-turned-comedian should be easy to recall for you reality tv nuts out there. He’s only one of the guys on Clean House.
Matt noticed symptoms of pain in his hands and feet during the summer of 2001. First he went to a podiatrist and received some medications for his feet. He then moved on to cortisone injections and continued taking aspirin. But when the symptoms didn’t go away, Matt finally had blood work done. The tests came back confirming that he had an aggressive case of RA.“My pain was so bad I even tried acupuncture. The acupuncturist stuck 67 needles in me…I became my own voodoo doll!”So what is Matt’s “Prescription for Laughs?” It’s the name of his stand-up routine that he performs at physician conferences. He also performed at the Arthritis Foundation National Development Conference in 2006, where he joked about his rheumatoid arthritis and had the room in stitches. “I like to use the jokes to give others with the disease hope and to thank those who work to create the cures that benefit me,” says Matt.When he performs in the medical setting, Matt strives to make people laugh because he wants them “to understand that living with a chronic disease doesn’t mean life is over.” Matt also says that “I want to thank the doctors, nurses, scientists and the volunteers who have tirelessly worked to find these new treatments that have helped me out so much.”
Bob Mortimer
I’ll be honest, I didn’t know who he was before researching RA. He is a British comedian and actor who co-owns Pett Productions.
In the My Kind of Day column in the latest Radio Times, Mortimer says: “I have to be careful because I have rheumatoid arthritis all over my body. Steroids keep it under control – it’s treatable, but not curable, and it flares up with a major attack every now and then.
“The doctors can only give you steroids and statistics, such as there’s a one-in-ten chance you’ll end up in a wheelchair. (My mum is crippled with it.)”
For more from Mortimer, visit this short BBC interview. For more on arthritis and interesting Still’s Disease stats from the UK, visit this Gazette Live piece.