Living in My World with People Who Don’t have Rheumatoid Arthritis
Posted on October 21st, 2008 by Aud under Diet & Nutrition, Exercise, Natural Health, Pain Management, Rheumatoid ArthritisIf you're new here, subscribe to my RSS feed and follow along with my Aud life :)
I’m not in contact day to day with another person who has a chronic condition like I have (at least not to my knowledge), so I don’t know what it’s like dealing with a person with an autoimmune disease like Rheumatoid Arthritis. My only point of view is from the side of the sufferer (the sufferer with RA), living with people who don’t have RA.
My post about ‘Arthritis Myths’ sparked this topic for me, when I wrote about how people assume you can’t or shouldn’t do anything anymore. It’s almost as frustrating as the pain in my joints. Most people are either one way or the other; treating me like a child who can’t cross the street without holding hands or not realizing how much pain and fatigue I feel during a major flare-up. There doesn’t seem to be too much of a happy medium, and trying to explain how you feel over and over gets old after a while.
I’m sure that every Rheumatoid Arthritis sufferer feels the same at one point or another. When people first learn that I have RA I’m treated with kid gloves, like I’m going to break into pieces if I do anything more strenuous than sitting down. But in all honesty, most of the time, the more I active I am, the better I feel. I love power walking a few miles every day, yard work and digging in the dirt is bliss for me, and when it comes to power tools, whether construction or destruction… stand back and let me play!
Being able to be independent is certainly important to me, but I’m also not a martyr. When the pain, aches and fatigue are too much for me handle without a grimace, I am usually able to put my stubbornness aside and ask for help, and most of the time help is given. I do remember one person who made a comment about how he didn’t think that Rheumatoid Arthritis hurts that much. I asked him if he’d ever been stung by a bee and he said he had. I asked him if he thought it hurt.
“Of course it did,” he answered.
“Well,” I returned. “My RA is like having bee stings in every joint. Hands, feet, knees, shoulders and elbows.”
That bee must have stung him pretty good because he never made a comment like it again.
I think I can also be honest in saying that I do get jealous of ‘normal’ people who don’t have to get up early just so they can get the stiff soreness worked out before the rest of the family wakes, who get to enjoy a glass of red wine, not have to worry whether the in coming low pressure system will set off a flare up. But I also see the blessing side of it. I’ve discovered that I can handle more than I thought, it’s made me a stronger person, and I’m much more empathetic to other people’s pain.
Living with the “normies” can be challenging, the main challenge being that they just don’t have a sweet clue as to how I am truly feeling, but it’s not their fault; they just aren’t as ‘blessed’ as I am!!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Tags: Managing Rheumatoid Arthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis and family, rheumatoid arthritis symptoms
Loading ...
I knew a person once that had RA when I did not.
Looking from the outside in was hard to imagine what they were going through.
One thing that I thought I knew was that this person was very angry, not
about RA (well that to), but life in general.
I started talking about life. I thought that life was a learning
centre where we come to learn lessons so that we can better understand the plights of others.
I mentioned way back then about anger and stress and how I thought that these things contribute to some of these diseases that we can be inflickted with.
I also mentioned God and love.
God and love was the last straw for this person, she flew right off the handle
saying “There is no #456789 God and how dare I talk this way”.
She has never spoken to me since.
I guess I mention this because I did not have a clue as to what was going on with her.
To this day I wish that I would have tackled things differently.
I am now in a position of understanding both sides of the fence and my own views still stand firm.
We cannot expect others to understand what it is like to have RA.
We have to except and move on, this is our lesson while others have thier own lessons to learn.
Peace to you all.
Sorry about the above ramble, guess I’m still bothered by it.
Hi
I was diagnosed with RA two and a half months ago. Initially, with the medication working pretty well, I thought the tough part of this illness was taking the pills…. I know, it sounds funny right!
Putting the pain aside, my biggest challenge right now is getting my colleagues to be more sensitive and aware of what I am going through. How have you managed in this regard?
I am tired of the “Ooh my grandmother has that” or ” just be positive, don’t let it keep you in bed” and “does that mean you are not coming in to work today?”