Daily Excerpt: How to Be a Good Mommy When You're Sick (Graves) - Introduction
Today's daily excerpt comes from How to Be a Good Mommy When You're Sick by Emily Graves. Introduction: My Story When women with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) get pregnant, their RA goes into remission. At least, that’s what my doctor told my husband, Robert, and me when we went in to discuss the possibility of having a baby. At that time, we both were professors with busy careers. I was 28, and according to my doctors, my RA was on “cruise control”. Thus, we were given a big “thumbs up” from the medical community to get pregnant. I would not trade our son for the world, but, boy, were they wrong! There was no remission for me, not unless remission means running head first into kidney failure and an abrupt pause in my career. After many months of discussions with baffled doctors, biopsies, and blood tests, I was diagnosed with Essential Mixed Cryoglobulinemia Type II—a complication of my RA that was causing kidney failure. I was officially the complicated, rare case “only fou