IT'S AN UNDERSTATEMENT to say Sandi Butchkiss, a self-described fanatical walker, was shocked when she woke up one morning to find she had osteoarthritis in her knee.
'I didn't know anybody with this condition. I could have just found out I came from another planet and I wouldn't have been more surprised,' Butchkiss recalls in a thick Brooklyn accent that hasn't left her in the 17 years she's been in Hong Kong working as a food and travel writer.
That was eight years ago. Now Butchkiss has self-published a book, I Had Arthritis, a 50-page volume documenting her two-year battle to overcome the condition, in which the cartilage - a natural shock-absorber that cushions the inside of joints - breaks down. The book includes a variety of supplements she took in the search for her own formula, which includes flax oil, shark cartilage and glucosamine/chontroitin tablets. It includes diagrams of the stretches that helped her build up the muscles and ligaments supporting her grinding arthritic joints.
But it is intended more of an inspirational guide than a how-to book, because Butchkiss couldn't find a single inspirational story when looking for hope that her condition would not only improve but be cured.
'About eight years ago when I got arthritis it was before the Internet as we know it, so I couldn't just write down arthritis and see what it told me because it told me nothing,' Butchkiss recalls. 'And it was difficult to move about a lot. So it was a slow and painstaking thing . . . I would go to the big book stores and there was nothing on arthritis, or there was arthritis of the knuckle by doctor so and so, a term paper or something. It was ludicrous, it was awful and it was scary.'
Even joining the American Arthritis Association didn't bring much joy. 'Every article, every book, every piece of literature that came my way was about learning to cope with arthritis,' Butchkiss says. 'I saw this word cope and my eyeballs crossed. It was a horrible experience, because I pictured myself coping first with a cane, then with a walker and then coping in a wheelchair. What does cope mean? I wanted to get to the bottom of this, and I can't even tell you why I thought I could cure this.'
Butchkiss' arthritis started in the left knee and 10 weeks later afflicted her right knee. The woman who used to wear out leather shoes during visits to New York was reduced to shuffling in agony, taking five minutes to haul herself up from a chair, and unable to get comfortable in bed.