One year ago, my husband and I said to hell with Covid and decided to get married – so we did. One year later, we are celebrating our anniversary in a brave new world. The pandemic altered a lot of plans – travel, birthday parties, graduations, and weddings. We were forced to learn a new way to navigate the day-to-day things we took for granted – grocery shopping, medical appointments, work, and our social lives – but mostly we learned how to live in a new pandemic world. Many of us with RA and other types of autoimmune disease were already accustomed to certain protocols to protect our health ..read more

It’s 2:00 am in the morning, and the fan has been on most of the night. The temperature reads 26 Celsius (78.8 Fahrenheit) in our apartment. The balcony door is open in the hope that a smidge of cool air might waft up from the ocean and offer some relief. A few hours from now those temperatures will climb to a high of 34 (93.2 F). It’s unusual for us to have temperatures this high. We usually sit around a comfortable 23 C (73.4 F) with an ocean breeze to cool the burn. But these past few days, temperatures throughout our province are reaching record levels. The summer just punched its way thro ..read more

Photo by J.G. Chayko It’s halfway through the month of May and the sun has made a reappearance after a few days of unsettled overcast weather. I get out of bed feeling the heat in my swollen fingers and shake the morning stiffness from my knees. It’s the one of the few mornings I have noticed the presence of my arthritis, although that’s not to say it hasn’t been there – lately it’s just been white noise in the background, like unbroken waves on the beach. One year ago, we were thrust into a new way of living. We created our own insular worlds, doing our best to stay safe and healthy, while tr ..read more

Cherry blossoms on the west coast – photo by J.G. Chayko It’s a warm sunny afternoon, a week before the official arrival of spring. Wild crocuses and daffodils are erupting from the fresh soil, and the cherry blossoms have started painting neighbourhoods in a blushing pink hue. The birds are nesting and celebrating the arrival of a new season of hope and life in song – a season we desperately need. My girlfriend and I sip wine beneath a blue sky, enjoying our first meeting together in almost a year. It doesn’t escape my notice that it was one year ago, almost to the date, when the world as we ..read more

An early morning winter sky. Photo by J.G. Chayko It’s an early Friday morning in February. The mild west coast weather has been draped in an arctic outflow. The white puff of my breath disintegrates in the cold air. It’s a chilly – 3 Celsius (26 Fahrenheit), and I’m sitting on my patio with a hot cup of coffee and taking in the morning. Wispy snow-filled clouds are drifting lazily in a blue winter sky. The seagulls are murmuring from their nest on the roof and the hummingbirds are twittering as they fly back and forth from the trees to the bright red feeders hanging on the balconies. It’s a r ..read more

A Vancouver Sunrise Photo – J.G. Chayko Just over a year ago, on December 31st of 2019, my husband and I returned home from our yearly getaway to Las Vegas, the last international trip we took before the world changed. At that time Covid was still a distant ghost in the headlines, something far away and across the seas. Shortly after returning home, we both fell ill with what we assumed was a bad cold or flu. We recovered and carried on and then came the news that faraway ghost was spreading across the globe at an alarming rate. We wondered if we were Covid survivors – but of course we’ll neve ..read more

Photo by J.G. Chayko The west coast windstorms swept in from the ocean drowning December in its usual cyclical trend. This year, the rain and wind seemed particularly heartless in the year we call 2020. When the rain stopped for a few days, the twinkling lights on houses and patios lit up the night sky, and filled the air with that certain seasonal serenity. It is our cue to take a step back and watch the last days of a tumultuous year evaporate into the darkest day of the season. 2020 has been a roller coaster of highs and lows. It has been challenging and difficult, forcing us to re-examine ..read more

J.G. Chayko – back on the bike again. The weak light of the sun filters through the clouds, radiating a soft glow on a grey November day. Soggy amber leaves thread the groove beneath the curb of the sidewalk. The road stretches clear and quiet ahead. A cool breeze rushes over my face, each breath reminding me how lucky I am to be alive, racing ahead with each rotation of the pedals. This year has seen a resurgence of cyclists. The city I live in has mild winters and designated bike lanes that allow us to ride all year long. Every spring my husband and I talked about getting our bikes tuned up ..read more

The Gold Outside My Window Photo by J.G. Chayko “We never saw it coming. We never could have guessed that a virus would change our world. The possibility only existed in movies, and there was always a dynamic hero that came to the rescue with a cure.”  – J.G. Chayko – Imagine RA Network: Chronic Illness in a Pandemic Life. The year is 2020. It’s a year most of us would like to forget. It brought about an unprecedented change, a tectonic a shift in the way we live our lives. 2020 has redefined the definition of normal. Chronic illness in pandemic life remains largely intact. Those with RA ..read more

Photo by J.G. Chayko The turning of the year is fast approaching. The darkness emerges a little earlier each day, the mornings are damp and shrouded in a ghostly mist, Mother Nature dresses in her finest colors and summons the howling wind to whip up a potpourri of brilliant splendor for our eyes. The burnt light from the harvest moon refracts through hazy windows, illuminating the warmth in our homes. Now is the time for harvesting the seeds that will carry us through the rest of the year. It’s a time to acknowledge and be grateful for the things that feed our bodies and souls. The celebratio ..read more