Celeste Corona

You find a perfect position in your bed, you don’t want to move and don’t want anyone to touch you until you must wake. As soon as you wake, your push yourself off your pillow (pain in your wrists and shoulders), you turn your hips to hang your legs off the bed (pain in your hips), you dread stepping on the floor because you already know the pain it will cause to the 33 joints in your feet. You place your feet on the floor and push your butt of the bed (pain on your feet, ankles, knees, hips and wrists). You find some comfort in your slippers but walk yourself like an old person to start your day. Many of us hit the shower first thing in the AM to warm up the body and reduce stiffness. You finally find your groove and go about your day, you go about your day with pain, constant pain, it never goes away, you just live with it. You’re lucky if you find remission, but you live in constant fear of it coming back, because it usually does. We smile and say good morning, and respond “I’m doing great thank you” to anyone that asks you “how are you this morning” because who really wants to listen to you vent about how much pain the cold weather causes you, and have to explain you have RA, explain it’s not an OLD people arthritis, and agree at how horrible it is that you have to live with such disease at such a young age.
We are true warriors, because not only are we at war with our own physical body, we are at war with our emotional and mental state. We are hard on ourselves on days and we ask, “why me,” we constantly must ask for help (I hate asking for help) to open caps, cans with a can opener, gas tanks, turn door knobs, put your child’s car seat in the car! We have gone through imagining our future and wondering “If I’m this bad now, how will I be when I’m 40, 50, 60” We go on to try to remember how it feels to have NO pain, I’ve lived with this for the last 8 years, I really don’t remember how it feels to be PAIN FREE, I have always had some pain in at least one joint out of the 360 in my body.

If you are living with a chronic pain disease, my heart goes out to you, and I pray you find something that gives you some relief, especially during your flare ups when you sometimes just ask god to take you now! If you ever feel like you need some one to vent to that knows exactly what your feeling feel free to DM me.
If you know someone living with RA, listen, don’t judge, don’t doubt their pain, don’t think that they are just exaggerating or that “it’s just in their head,” offer them help without asking if they need it, just get the can opener out of their damn hand and open the can, open the gas tank for them, don’t ask don’t make them feel like they NEED your help. When they tell you they feel like shit because of their Pain don’t reply with “oh really, my _____ hurts too” (big eye roll) and if you really just can’t be there for them, if you honestly think they are exaggerating, leave them alone, please, because as a RA sufferer, we just need to be surrounded by people who genuinely care and love us.
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Some of us will sooner or later be crippled to a point where we are USELESS and will need someone to carry all our weight, and that is our biggest fear.

“Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disorder that can affect more than just your joints. In some people, the condition also can damage a wide variety of body systems, including the skin, eyes, lungs, heart and blood vessels.
An autoimmune disorder, rheumatoid arthritis occurs when your immune system mistakenly attacks your own body’s tissues.” –  mayoclinic.org

xoxo

Celeste C Lopez