Arthritis Support Community Facebook ad: “Feel Like Yourself Again”

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My son in law tried to buy me a battery powered chain saw for my 61st birthday. He didn't come out and say that's what he was doing. He showed up at the house with a box from Home Depot in the back of his Tacoma, all sheepish, and said he'd been reading about how much easier the new ones are, no gas, no pull cord, just push a button and it runs. He said it like a man selling something to a stranger. I've known Ben for 12 years. He married my daughter Rachel when she was 24. He teaches 4th grade over in Johnson City. Good man. Patient man. The kind of man who reads instruction manuals cover to cover before he opens a box. He wasn't reading up on chain saws because he wanted one. He was reading up on chain saws because he'd been watching me not use mine. There's half a cord of white oak sitting seasoned in my side yard. Been there since October. Rachel's brother Danny cut it and dropped it off before deer season because he thought he was doing me a favor. Big rounds, most of them, 18 inches across, some bigger. It's beautiful wood. Tight grain. The kind of oak that burns for hours and puts out heat that fills a house. And it's been sitting under a blue tarp for going on 8 months because I can't grip the pull cord on my Stihl anymore. The saw is a 271. Bought it new in 2004. Started every time for 20 years. I could have that thing running in 3 pulls in 12 degree weather. Cut cord after cord for our house, for my daughter's house, for my mother in law when she was still alive. Now I stand over it in the yard and I can't pull hard enough to catch the compression. My right hand gives out at the wrist before the cord even hits the resistance. My left hand can't grip the front handle steady enough to keep the saw down while I pull. I've stood in the yard on 4 separate Saturdays and tried, and 4 separate Saturdays I've walked back inside and put a heating pad on my forearm and told my wife the choke was flooded. She knows it's not the choke. My name is Cal. I'm 61 years old. I live in Elizabethton, Tennessee, which is up in Carter County, near the Watauga River, about 20 minutes from where the mountains start turning into North Carolina. I was a pipefitter for 34 years. Union man. Local 718. Worked out of Kingsport mostly, some Bristol jobs, a couple of long stretches over in Knoxville when they were building out the hospital additions. Retired 3 years ago because my knees gave out and my hands weren't far behind. That's what I told myself. Knees and hands gave out. Age. Nothing to do about it. That's what my doctor said too. Dr. Petree over in Johnson City has been my primary since 2011. Nice enough. Doesn't rush you. Looks at you when he talks. But every time I've gone in about my hands or my knees or the ache that lives in my hips now, he says the same thing. "Cal, you were a pipefitter for 34 years. You crawled under sinks. You worked overhead. You carried water heaters up staircases. Your body's been through a lot. This is what happens." He's prescribed me the anti inflammatories. Told me to lose 15 pounds. Told me to try swimming, which is the funniest advice anybody has ever given me because I don't swim and I'm not about to start at 61. The anti inflammatories help for about 4 hours at a time. Then they wear off and my hands go back to what they were. The 15 pounds I've been trying to lose since 2019. Down 6, up 8, down 3, up 4. The cycle every man knows. Swimming I'm not doing. So I do what most men my age do. I work around it. I don't reach for the top shelf anymore. I don't twist off the tight jar lids. I let my wife open the pickle jar because it hurts less to hand it to her than to feel my thumb slip on the glass. I've traded my leather work gloves for the softer canvas ones because leather requires grip strength I don't have. I've stopped mowing my own lawn on the push mower and use the rider even when the yard's dry. Little accommodations. Everybody makes them. That's what I told myself. But the chain saw was different. The chain saw was the thing I couldn't work around. Because that oak is in my yard. My daughter cut it for me. My son burned oak in his stove all winter and I gave him a face cord out of last year's pile. This year I've got nothing to give and nothing to burn myself, and my woodstove has been sitting cold since Christmas because I've been burning propane out of the tank behind the house at $3.19 a gallon. I've got 3 tons of firewood sitting in my side yard and I've been paying to heat my house. That's the sentence I couldn't stop rolling around in my head. Which brings me back to Ben and his Tacoma. He'd been calling Rachel about it, apparently. Asking her what he could get me. Rachel told him about the wood pile. She told him I'd tried to start the Stihl 3 times in April and given up. She told him she was worried. She told him what she wasn't telling me, which was that she thought her father was getting weaker faster than her father was willing to admit. Ben decided a battery saw was the answer. No pull cord. No compression. Push a button. Cut wood. Problem solved. He came over on a Saturday in early May. Sat on the porch with me. Drank a beer. Made small talk about the Cardinals. And then he said, "Cal, I got you something for your birthday. It's early. I know your birthday's not till June. But I wanted to bring it now because I thought maybe you'd want it for the oak." He walked out to his truck and pulled the box out of the bed. I saw the picture on the side. DeWalt 60 volt. 16 inch bar. Brushless motor. And I sat on that porch and I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time. I felt embarrassed. Not at Ben. Ben's a good man. He was doing what a good son in law does. He saw a problem and he tried to fix it. I was embarrassed at myself. Because the saw wasn't the problem. The saw was fine. My saw was fine. The saw I bought in 2004 that had started 4,000 times without a hiccup was fine. What wasn't fine was me. And instead of me getting fixed, Ben was buying me an easier saw. Ben was buying me a saw for a weaker man. And I was going to have to accept it, and every time I used it going forward I was going to think about the fact that my son in law bought it for me because he'd been watching me fail. I sat there with the box between us and I didn't know what to say. Then Ben said, "Cal, my dad's driving up next Sunday. He's coming through on his way to Boone. He wanted to know if he could stop by." Ben's dad is a man named Hollis Barrett. Retired agriculture extension officer for the state of Tennessee. Spent 38 years driving from farm to farm in the eastern half of the state helping people figure out what was wrong with their soil, their cattle, their hay crops, their pond fish. Salt of the earth type. Grew up in Greeneville. Retired to a little house on 12 acres outside Erwin about 5 years ago. Hollis is 66. I've known him since Ben and Rachel got engaged, so about 13 years. We've hunted deer together maybe 8 times. Had Thanksgiving at the same table 7 or 8 times. I know his wife. I know his other kids. He's family in the way in laws' families become family. I hadn't seen him since Christmas. I said, "Yeah, tell him to come by. I'll be around." Ben said, "I told him about the wood pile." I looked at him. "He said he wanted to talk to you about it." The following Sunday, at about 2 in the afternoon, Hollis Barrett pulled his Silverado into my driveway with a cooler in the back and a plastic bag from the pharmacy on the seat next to him. He walked up to the porch and he didn't look like the man I'd had Thanksgiving with 5 months ago. He looked like the man he was 10 years ago. I want to be careful how I describe this because I don't want it to sound bigger than it was. He wasn't a different person. He wasn't glowing. He wasn't 30 years younger. He just looked like Hollis from before. Standing straighter. Moving easier through the porch steps. Reaching down to shake my hand without that little wince he'd started doing sometime around 2022 when his shoulder started giving him trouble. I noticed it in his hand when he shook mine. Firm grip. Squeezed hard. Held it a second longer than he needed to. Six months ago Hollis had shaken my hand at a family dinner and I'd felt his fingers not quite close. Not weakness exactly. Just that thing where the last knuckle doesn't want to bend the whole way. I'd noticed it because I have it too. It's the thing a man notices in another man his age. Now his hand closed around mine like a wrench. He said, "Cal, I brought us beer. Let's sit." We sat on the porch for 20 minutes talking about nothing. His new tractor. My daughter. The bear that broke into his neighbor's chicken coop. Regular Sunday afternoon talk. Then he said, "Ben told me about your wood pile." I looked at the trees across the road. "It's been a hard spring." "He told me you can't pull the cord." "I could pull it if I had to." "Cal." I looked at him. "Cal, I couldn't lift a 5 gallon bucket of feed by myself last October. Julie was carrying them for me. My own wife. To my own chickens. On my own farm." I stopped drinking my beer. "By January I couldn't turn a doorknob without wrapping my hand in a rag first because the cold hurt my fingers so bad. I couldn't hold a coffee cup without switching hands halfway through. My knees clicked on every step. I was taking 800 milligrams of ibuprofen 3 times a day and it was barely touching it." I said, "Hollis." "I retired 5 years ago because I couldn't get in and out of the state truck anymore. I told everybody it was time. What it really was is I couldn't climb up into the cab without pulling on the door frame with both hands. And by year 2 of retirement I couldn't shake somebody's hand without them noticing." He set his beer down. "Cal, my knees don't click anymore. My hands work. I chopped 4 cords of hickory in April. Just me. My saw. Two afternoons. I hadn't done that in 6 years." I looked at him. "What are you telling me?" "I'm telling you my son wants to buy you a saw because he thinks that's the problem you have. It's not the problem you have. I know because I had it. I still had it in November." He picked up the pharmacy bag from beside his chair and set it on the little table between us. "Cal, I'm going to talk for about 15 minutes. If at the end of it you want me to leave, I'll leave. But I'd like you to listen." I nodded. And Hollis Barrett, retired agriculture extension officer, spent the next 15 minutes telling me about my joints. He said the thing nobody had said to me in 6 years of doctor visits. He said, "Cal, your joints aren't wearing out because you got old. Your joints are wearing out because there's something building up inside them that shouldn't be there. And every year it's built up a little more. And nobody's told you that because nobody's looking at that." He said, "Inside every joint in your body, there's a signaling pathway. A little switch. That switch controls how much inflammation gets sent to the joint. When your body's working right, that switch is calm. It only flips on when there's an injury or something that actually needs healing, and then it flips off when the job is done." He said, "But over the years, that switch gets stuck on." "Stress flips it on. Processed food flips it on. The environment we're in flips it on. And most of all, oxidative stress, the rust that builds up in your body as you age, flips it on. And once it flips on and stays on, your joints get flooded with inflammatory signals every day, all day, whether you need them or not. It's like your body's got a fire alarm going off in every joint at the same time. All the time. Even when there's no fire." "That's why it doesn't matter how much you rest. That's why it doesn't matter how much ibuprofen you take. Ibuprofen just quiets the signal for 4 hours. The switch is still flipped. As soon as the pill wears off, the noise comes back." "And every year the switch stays flipped, more damage gets done. The cartilage in your joints starts breaking down faster than your body can maintain it. The tissue around the joint gets stiffer. The fluid inside dries out. Your hands get weaker. Your knees get louder. And your doctor tells you it's aging." He tapped the pharmacy bag. "It's not aging. It's a switch that's stuck on." I sat there. "How do you turn it off?" He said, "You don't turn it off. Your body knows how to turn it off. It's been turning it off since the day you were born. You just have to give it what it needs to do that again." He reached into the bag and pulled out a white bottle. "This is what I've been taking since November." The label said Auniva Pomegranate. I laughed. I didn't mean to. It just came out. "Fruit juice, Hollis?" He didn't laugh back. "It's not juice. It's the peel." "The peel of a pomegranate?" "Cal, the compound they put in this stuff is called punicalagins. It's only in the peel. It's not in the juice. It's not in the seeds. It's not in the fruit part. It's in the leathery part of the peel that nobody eats. And it's one of the most studied antioxidant compounds in nature. That's what neutralizes the oxidative stress that's flipping your switch." He turned the bottle in his hand. "When the rust in your body gets neutralized, the signal that keeps your inflammation pathway flipped on starts to quiet down. The switch settles. Your joints stop getting flooded with inflammatory signals 24 hours a day. And then your body does what it's always known how to do. It starts maintaining the tissue. It starts protecting the cartilage. The fluid comes back to the joint. The grip comes back to the hand. Not because something forced it. Because the fire alarm finally stopped ringing and your body could hear itself think." He set the bottle on the table. "Cal, I've been to 100 farmers with sick cattle. I know what a real ingredient looks like versus a marketing story. This is a real ingredient. The compound is real. The pathway is real. And I've felt what it did to me." I picked up the bottle. "Why did you tell me?" "Because Ben told me you were going to accept his gift and pretend it was fine, and then next Christmas your son is going to buy you a stair lift. And the Christmas after that, your daughter is going to help you sell your house because you can't handle the stairs anymore. And you and Denise are going to move into one of those places out by Milligan College with the assisted units. And you're going to sit in a chair for the rest of your life and tell everybody you had a good run." He looked at me straight. "You don't have to have a good run yet. You're 61 years old. You've got 25 good years in you if you take care of what's stuck. I'm sitting here proving it." I turned the bottle in my hand. "How long till I'd know?" "3 weeks before I felt anything. 6 weeks before I trusted it. 3 months before I chopped that hickory. It's not fast. It's not a drug. It's a body pulling itself back to where it used to be. That takes some time." He finished his beer. "There's a website on the back of the bottle. There's a guarantee. If it doesn't do anything for you in 90 days, send it back and get your money back. That's what talked me into trying it. I figured I had 90 days to lose and 25 years to gain." He stood up. "I'm not going to bring it up again. You do what you want to do." He went back to his truck and he drove to Boone. I sat on the porch and I looked at the bottle. Then I looked at the tarp over the wood pile. Then I looked at Ben's box, still sitting inside the front door where I'd set it a week earlier, unopened. I went inside and I ordered a bottle from the website Hollis showed me. It came 4 days later. Auniva's Pomegranate. Organic concentrated pomegranate peel extract. Standardized to punicalagins. Made in the USA. 30 servings per bottle. 2 capsules a day. That's it. That's the whole product. I started the next morning with my coffee. I want to tell you what happened, and I want to tell you honestly, because I'm 61 years old and I don't have time to lie about what a supplement did. Week 1 I felt nothing. If anything I felt a little frustrated because I'd built it up in my head and my hands still hurt the same when I woke up. Week 2 I felt nothing. Week 3 I noticed I'd opened the pickle jar without thinking about it. It sounds small. I know it sounds small. But I hadn't opened a pickle jar with my right hand in probably 2 years. I'd handed it to Denise or run it under hot water. That Wednesday I'd made a sandwich for lunch and reached for the pickle jar on the counter and twisted it and it opened. And then I stood in the kitchen holding the lid, looking at my hand. Week 4 I picked up a 40 pound bag of dog food out of the trunk of Denise's car with one hand. Not thinking about it. Just did it the way you do it when you've done it for 40 years. And when I set it on the porch, I realized I'd used my right wrist to swing it up and my right wrist hadn't complained. Week 5 Denise noticed I was going up the stairs differently. I'd been taking the stairs one at a time for the past 2 years. Right foot up. Left foot up to meet it. Right foot again. Left foot to meet it. Like a kid learning stairs. Because my knees couldn't handle bearing weight through a full step. Week 5 I climbed the stairs to the second floor to grab a hat out of the closet, and I climbed them the way I used to climb them. Left, right, left, right. I got to the top and I stopped and I said out loud, "Oh." I said "oh" to an empty hallway. Week 6 I walked out to the side yard on a Saturday morning and I pulled the tarp off the oak pile. I pulled the Stihl out of the shed. I filled it. Checked the chain. Set it down. Set my left hand on the front handle and pressed. Grabbed the pull cord with my right and pulled. It caught on the second pull. I want you to picture this. I stood in my side yard with my saw running for the first time in 8 months and I sat down in the grass and I cried like I hadn't cried since my mother died. I cried because I'd thought I was done. I cried because Ben had been ready to buy me an easier life and I'd almost taken it. I cried because Hollis Barrett had driven 45 minutes off his route to a cabin in Boone to sit on my porch and tell me the truth. I cried because my hands worked. That was 6 weeks ago. I've cut the whole pile. 4 face cords stacked against the shed. Denise brings me coffee in the morning and I split kindling on the block by the porch and my hands hold the axe steady. My knees carry me up and down the stairs. My wrists open jars. I've started walking with my grandson on Sundays down to the river bridge and back, which is about a mile round trip, and the last time I did that walk was 2022. I'm not going to sit here and tell you I'm 25 again. I'm 61. My hair's grey and my back still gets stiff on cold mornings and I don't run anywhere. But I'm doing my life again. I'm using my saw. I'm heating my house with the wood in my yard. I'm the man my son in law knew before he started reading about battery models. Ben came over 2 weeks ago and saw the split pile and asked what happened. I told him about Hollis. He said his dad had mentioned something a few months ago but hadn't wanted to push it. I told him I was grateful for the chain saw box in the corner, which is still unopened, and that I planned on keeping it in case a day comes when I really do need it. But that day's not this year. He laughed and hugged me and told me he was going to call his dad. If you're a man reading this and you've been quietly accommodating what your body used to do without thinking, if you've been telling your wife the choke is flooded when you both know it isn't, if there's a saw in your shed or a project in your garage or a hike your grandkids ask you to do that you keep saying maybe next time to, I want to tell you what Hollis told me on that porch. You don't have to have had your good run yet. The pathway is real. The compound is real. Auniva's Pomegranate is the organic concentrated peel extract standardized to punicalagins. 2 capsules a day. Made in the USA. It comes in a bottle with 30 servings and a 90 day money back guarantee, meaning if it doesn't do anything for you inside those 90 days, you send the bottle back and every dollar goes back on your card. That was the part that made Hollis try it. That was the part that made me try it. 90 days to lose. Years to gain. 👉 auniva.co/pom/5 P.S. I want to be clear about the peel thing because Hollis was clear about it with me and it matters. Most pomegranate products you see on shelves are made from the juice or standardized to ellagic acid. That's not the same thing. The compound that does the work on the inflammation pathway is called punicalagins, and it lives almost entirely in the peel, which is the part nobody eats. Auniva's is a concentrated peel extract standardized to those punicalagins. If you go grab a bottle of pomegranate juice at Kroger thinking it's the same thing, it won't be. Hollis explained that to me twice because he'd made the same mistake his first month looking for something like this. 👉 auniva.co/pom/5 P.P.S. The 90 day guarantee is real and it's simple. You order the bottle. You take 2 capsules a day. If at the end of 90 days your hands aren't opening jars any easier, your knees aren't climbing stairs any better, or you just don't feel any different than you did the day you started, you send the bottle back and Auniva refunds you every penny. That's the whole deal. No paperwork. No arguing. No calling 4 different phone numbers. Just send back the bottle. Hollis said that was the part that made him pull the trigger. I agreed. I'm 61 years old. I don't have time to gamble, but I've got 90 days to test. 👉 auniva.co/pom/5 P.P.P.S. I'm going to tell you one more thing and then I'll leave you alone. That box from Ben is still sitting inside my front door. I haven't opened it. I keep it there on purpose. Every morning when I walk past it on the way to the coffee pot, I remember what almost happened. I almost let my son in law buy me a smaller life. I almost accepted, at 61 years old, that my good run was over. And a man I'd known for 12 years drove up my driveway with a bottle in a pharmacy bag and told me a truth my doctor had never told me. That the switch that's flooding your joints with inflammation can quiet back down when the oxidative stress that's holding it open gets neutralized. That your body still knows what to do. That it's just been trying to be heard over an alarm nobody could turn off. Hollis's alarm is off. Mine is off. I've got 3 face cords of oak by the shed and a running saw and a grandson who thinks his grandpa's back to normal, and if there's a bottle sitting on Auniva's website that got me to this porch on this Sunday morning writing this to you, then I owe it 5 minutes of my time to tell you where to find it. 👉 auniva.co/pom/5

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Feel Like Yourself Again

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