Sunday 15 August 2010

Camp

I'm just back from Arthritis Camp!

Basically there's this brilliant course for people aged 17 - 25 with arthritis and it's all free and you get to meet up a few times a year and go on residential weekends. Sometimes it's more about discussing personal growth and feelings and what not and sometimes it's a bit more about fun. This weekend it was an activities weekend up in the north of Scotland in the middle of the mountains.

We did lots of stuff like climbing up rocks in the river and swimming against the current in the FREEZING cold water, skiing (on dry slopes as it would be pretty hard to find snow in august), archery, rock climbing and mountain biking.

Yes.. people with arthritis CAN do all these things, healthy people!! That was the best part of the weekend, seeing everyone achieve so much and push past their limits.

I was totally scared of doing the river stuff because I generally hate being cold and wet. But it was actually great fun, even though swimming against the current was such hard work and I now totally understand how easy it is to drown in a river.

The hard part of the weekend was seeing some of my friends in pain. My best friend is mid flare but came along for the banter anyway, but after a particularly energetic game of baseball he was in quite a bad state. It really upset me seeing others feeling so bad, even though I know it's all part of the process. Still hard to watch though.

But seeing people proud of themselves and clambering up rocks and what not was awesome. Plus the weather was beautiful, which is very unusual for Scotland.

4 comments:

  1. Way to go, Squirrel – glad you had fun! :) L

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  2. This is awesome! I really wish I had things like that when I was younger (and now, too!!)! It's such an amazing feeling of achievement to do something physically strenous when you have RA :)

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  3. Yeah it is a really good program, I don't think it runs everywhere in the UK but I think they do it in some parts of England and in Northern Ireland too. Shame that I'll be too old for it in a year! They are thinking of setting up something for 25 to 40 year olds though which would be awesome...we're still so young to deal with all this but there's not much in terms of support for that age group.

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  4. That is great. I would have loved hitting a camp like that when I was younger and healthy! Sounds like you had a good time, with the exception of seeing your friend in pain.

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