My RA Life

 Medications....pills, injections, infusions, and that God-awful prednisone.  You will find if you keep up with me that I am not an advocate for prednisone.  That seems to be the fix all from doctors when you have a chronic illness. The immediate side effects are great. You feel better and the inflammation gets under control. The long term side effects are devastating. My Momma who raised me was actually my step mom and had Lupus. I watched her doctor give her large doses of prednisone years ago and it nearly killed her, crippling her to her bed. I never want to use Prednisone long term, but sometimes it is necessary to keep moving. I call it the necessary evil until I can find a way to fight out of this disease. At the end of 2020, I was feeling pretty good. Though I had the classic joint stiffness in the early morning it was manageable. I was able to work the stable, groom my horse, care for my other animals and clean house again as well as work my two jobs. (I am remin...

  The road to a diagnosis of a chronic illness is paved with a lot of doctors appointments. I journaled the first year of that road through 2019 and early 2020. The Beginning: 5/28/19: I was seen by Dr. Murray (internist) for my regular scheduled yearly check. I felt exhausted but other than that I was fine. 6/2019 – Seen at urgent care for fatigue and a blister type rash.   There they ran bloodwork to rule out Lyme disease and other conditions. All test were normal. I was given steroid cream and advised to keep an already scheduled yearly appointment with my dermatologist. 7/5/19 – seen at urgent care when I awoke and had lost use of my right hand. It was extremely swollen and I could not bend any fingers. 7/8/19 Seen at dermatologist. Biopsy taken of blister rash. Results: hyper sensitivity to bug bite. I do not recall having been bitten by anything. 7/9/19:    I was seen by Dr. Murray for follow-up from my urgent care visit. I had swelling in my feet and h...

  W hat is RA? RA stands for rheumatoid arthritis. According to the Arthritis Foundation it is summarized as follows: " Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) causes joint inflammation and pain. It happens when the immune system doesn’t work properly and attacks the lining of the joints, called the synovium. The disease commonly affects the hands, knees or ankles, and usually the same joint on both sides of the body, such as both hands or both knees. But sometimes RA causes problems in other parts of the body as well, such as the eyes, heart and circulatory system and/or the lungs. For unknown reasons, more women than men get RA, and it usually develops in middle age. Having a family member with RA increases the odds of developing RA." https://www.arthritis.org/diseases/rheumatoid-arthritis No one, including researchers, knows what causes RA. The inflammatory responses in the body occurs when the immune system erroneously detects the body's own cells as foreign and reacts to it by rel...

 In 2019 I started a journey with RA that no one wants to have to go through. Having been diagnosed with Celiacs disease in 2011 and then insulin resistance a few years later, I was familiar with autoimmune diseases. However nothing could have prepared me for the debilitating pain of rheumatoid arthritis.  I have always been active and played sports while in school. I played softball until I was 40 years old! I have ridden my motorcycle throughout numerous states and never feared traveling alone. I could not imagine my life changing from no fear to fear of being alone. I remember the first signs that I had that something was wrong was that I was experiencing pain in the bottom of my left foot. We were scheduled to go ride our motorcycles to Washington, DC from North Carolina in Rolling Thunder during Memorial Day weekend. I knew I would be on my feet a lot so I bought inserts for my riding boots. When we got there, man it was hot. Like so hot. It was over 100 degrees and we ha...