When Barbara Ann Porte was diagnosed with osteoarthritis, or OA, in her hands in 2010, she thought of two things: an echidna and her mother. Maybe that’s just the way a writer’s mind works, for Porte, 66, is the award-winning author of 30 books for children and young adults.

Instead of focusing on the chronic illness, she created a word picture of it – an echidna is a porcupine-like mammal – and remembered that whenever she was ill as a child, her mother’s care felt like the best medicine.

She wove these themes into a poem, which also explores the frustration of her diagnosis – that there is no cure, and that she could not have prevented her OA. “I did wonder,” Barbara says, “because I was a librarian for many years and am a writer, and I use my hands a lot.”

Because her arthritis is in the joints where her thumbs connect with her wrists, holding a pen, opening jars, flossing her teeth and putting up her hair are all little things that hurt, she says. But she doesn’t dwell on the pain and doesn’t want to be considered “a patient.”

“I’m not sick and I don’t have a severe case of arthritis. I want to continue my writing and keep my life as it was as much as possible,” she says. Indeed, the prolific Porte just completed work on Shanghai Affair, a novella for adults.

Here is one of her poems about OA.

Standard Generic Osteoarthritis
By Barbara Ann Porte

Who even knew that there was such a diagnosis
or that it could cause instantaneous metamorphosis,
in my case from end stage middle age to old,
featuring stiff fingers, wrist bunions, turned elbows,
spiny bumps, bumpy spine, bone spurs, like some kind
of echidna, I think; lumbar vertebrae collapsed, hips,
knees, ankles, feet, all in imminent danger
of a metabolism gone haywire: “Nothing you did
caused it, nothing you can do will reverse it,
preserving motion by limiting movement is not
an option, immobility causing joints to freeze,
also called degenerative joint disease, permanent
and progressive.” I think, How satisfying it must be
to be an orthopedist ­– precise diagnoses, reliable
prognoses, instant gratification – for the physician,
not for the patient. Question: how to grasp onto the fact
pain I thought, for months, was temporary
will accompany me for the rest of my life?
If my mother could see me now, what would she say?

“Everything will be okay.
Don’t worry.” Her eyes would veil
with concern. Her children’s illnesses
invariably elicited acts of tenderness,
otherwise rare; her home remedies included
bed rest with radio, hot tea with honey,
chicken noodle soup, cinnamon toast, mashed
potatoes, mixed ginger ale and grape juice,
fruit cocktail in jello, aspirins crushed
in apple sauce, a steam tent to ease breathing,
created by a handheld vaporizer, nozzle aimed
at an umbrella open in bed, patient and toys
underneath it, and daily, for morale boosting,
an aired room, fresh linens, plumped pillows,
on the dresser, a bouquet of sweetpeas
or irisis. So long as she lived.

I shake out my wrists and my hands,
Place them on the small of my back,
gently arch it. It isn’t the flowers
or the food that I miss, not the freshly aired
room, it’s my mother. Gone now for two decades,
who else ever showed so much sympathy
regarding my health?

I pick up the telephone and call my daughter.
I warn her: “Look after your hands,”
realizing even as I say it, it will do her
no good. Didn’t my mother used to tell me,
“Take care of your feet.” Hers always hurt,
I think, now, from arthritis. Clearly we focus
our efforts on the wrong things. Sympathy’s
much better. It’s often all we have
to offer. Therefore, let mine be
sufficient.