Living With Rheumatoid Arthritis

Living with rheumatoid arthritis means that you constantly have to manage your life in response to the disease. Some days it is just not possible to do much at all because what most non-sufferers don't realise is that people with RA also suffer from fatigue. You may start the day off fine and then all of a sudden you feel as though you've attempted to climb Everest, your body begins to flag and your eyes feel like lead. The only response to the situation is to get the rest that your body is telling you it wants. Fatigue is a real problem when you work from home but even worse if part of what you do takes you outside the home. People don't want to hear your excuses and so you have to find some other reason for rescheduling a meeting at the last minute.

What RA is and Does

Rheumatoid arthritis is an auto-immune system disease, which means your body treats healthy tissue as the enemy, this means that when you have RA you are far more likely to have other health problems including skin problems, heart disease and a lowered resistance to infection. RA changes the way you live your life. One of the features of the disease is stiffness in the morning that can last anywhere from an hour to a whole day. On bad days my husband has to lift me out of bed as I cannot raise myself.

You have to work round RA, my freelance work sometimes suffers because of the disease and so I have tried to find a way of fitting it round the days when my wrists and fingers won't do what they are supposed to. I know that before long I will need to invest in voice recognition software to get through the work. I am lucky because my husband is very supportive and will pick up all the things that I now find difficult in the the home. Some partners cannot cope with the effects of the disease on their joint lives and pull out of the relationship, I thank God that I don't have that heartache to deal with.

If you think that RA is just a matter of aches and pains that people should just forget about, then you are sadly wrong. RA interferes with a person's life to such an extent that some days they are barely capable of sitting up, let alone doing anything.

Medication

The medication that RA sufferers have to take often has side effects and so they may not stay on one medication for long. Mostly people are given anti-inflammatory pills that can cause stomach ulcers. Some sufferers, especially those with the more aggressive form of the disease, are given medication that is designed to slow down the progress of a disease which often cripples you. The problem with this type of medication, methatrixate is the one that I have to take, is that it makes you more vulnerable to infections such as flu and pneumonia, which I had recently.

Many people with RA also take narcotics such as Tramadol to help ease the pain, again this type of medication can have side effects. One can only hope that further research will come up with other ways of coping with the disease.