Hi, I'm new. I was diagnosed with RA about 2 years ago and it has been up and down ever since! It started with a lot of shoulder pain, but I was a powerlifter then so I just attributed the pain with my rigorous training schedule. I'm also a student and was waitressing when my right knee started getting really bad, along with mild pain in just about every other joint in my body (hands, feet, wrists, etc, etc). One night I woke up with the most agonizing right knee pain, it had totally locked up, swollen like a soccer ball and I could not put any weight on it. Since I am a student and have no insurance, I waited until morning and got myself to the student clinic on campus. It is there they did the test for RA and they gave me an Rx for prednisone (my dad has RA, so we kinda knew to look for it) and it came back positive. The depressing part of this story is I was fired from my job for not showing up to work that day, I called from the clinic and my boss had the nerve to yell at me and tell me not to show up again if I didn't make it in for my shift!
Anyway, with much paper work and running around, I'm on a plan with the local hospital and the drug companies to get help with my doctor bills and prescriptions. I've been on and off prednisone, but the last time I was on it, it made little difference. I started on Plaquenil, but there was no change so now I'm on Methotrexate and just last week added Humira on top of that. I've also been through about every NSAID, last one that worked for awhile was Mobic, but now I'm on a trial run of Celebrex.
Aside from all the RA stuff, I'm a student, I start graduate school in the Fall (wahoo!), I got my BS in geology. The hardest adjustment I've made is that I was an athlete before the diagnosis, I used to be a track&fielder-turned-powerlifter and martial artist (kickboxing and hapkido were my main focusses). I would workout for 3+ hours six days out of the week. I broke my toe in a fight in kickboxing and let me tell you that foot gives me the worst trouble now! Oh well. I still like martial arts, but now it is a much more subdued form and no more contact fighting (d'oh). I still like to lift weights, but also that has seriously been subdued. It is hard sometimes to deal with the loss of strength and muscle mass, but I'm mostly at peace with it now (mostly!), I just try to be greatful for everyday that I'm well enough to get in any kind of a workout at all :) .
Right now for the summer between undergrad and grad school, I'm working as an intern at a State Park and I love it! It gets to a wonderful 100+ degrees F in the daytime and no lower than 65 degrees F at night. Some days are only 1% humidity. Every RA patient should summer here! The great weather plus the new drug mix have me feeling 80% of my old self, although I try not to compare to my pre-diagnosis days to now, its hard not to when feeling good. Also, where I'm at is known for its rock climbing and I've started to learn how to do that on the easiest of climbs (not more stress on the joints than climbing a ladder, full hand holds and positively sloped), its so much fun to be learning something new that is active!
Anyway, I could go on and on, but I'll end this post here :) I hope everyone is having a *good* day!
Copyright ArthritisInsight.com