If you're like me, you may sometimes head online when you need support for your health problems. Unfortunately, if you're also a Psoriatic Arthritis patient like me, a gap exists in the resources
available to us.
Large non-profit organizations like the Arthritis Foundation, the National Psoriasis Foundation, and the Spondylitis Association of America provide basic information about Psoriatic Arthritis (PsA), but their focus is broad, and PsA doesn't really make top billing. Forums connected with
these organizations provide great venues for discussion (Arthritis Foundation Forum, TalkPsoriasis, and Spondylitis Association of America Forum), but patients
with PsA are the minority in each of these forums, outnumbered by patients with
psoriasis without PsA or those with other rheumatic diseases.
As for
blogs on the subject, there are a handful of diary style blogs written
by PsA patients, an advice column style blog written by various doctors and sponsored by the National Psoriasis Foundation, and one informative blog called Understanding Psoriatic Arthritis
that has not been updated for over a year, though I hope the author will update again, because I've learned a lot from digging around in the archives! Right now, I can't find any active blogs written by PsA patients to help their fellow patients learn how to live with this disease.
That's where I come in.
I'm no medical expert.
I am more of an expert than your doctor on one subject though: what it feels like to have PsA. If your doctor also happens to have PsA then that's another matter, but since less than 3% of the population shares this form of inflammatory arthritis, it's not terribly likely.[1]
My arthritis has been active to one degree or another since about 2006, and I've picked up a few tricks along the way for coping with this disease. I look forward to sharing those tricks with you. If you have any other tips and tricks to pass along, please do!
References
1. Ceponis, A. and Kavanaugh, A. (2011). Psoriatic arthritis: Advances in therapy. Advances in Rheumatology 9(2), 45-55.
Coping with Psoriatic Arthritis:
Why Blog about It?
I think you've got a great start going, but considering how rare you say Psoriatic Arthritis is, you might want to broaden your audience a little. For now, I would like to see an explanation of PsA, and my advice for the future would be to incorporate anecdotes into your posting.
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