Tonight I got to meet... | Arthritis Information

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the infamous Lizzy Mae. She is my hubby's Grandpa's friend. They have been friends every since they were in their 20's (I think) she was his wife's best friend.

Anyways...

Pawpaw has been telling stories about Lizzie Mae and that he has been running her around town and all. And how she has RA. Well, tonight I got to met her. She is in her late 60's - early 70's.

Pawpaw told me of how her fingers are no longer fingers and that her feet are all plastic. Well, I got to see her hands first hand tonight and I felt soo sad for her. Her fingers are literally mush. They just flop over or sag and she cannot pick stuff up. She can however still use her thumbs to a certain degree. She ate her hamburger with a fork using her thumb.

Then she told me about how long it took for her to have one foot totally replaced with plastic parts. It took 8hrs for one foot!

My hubby kinda looked shocked to see her hands like that. I told him that her hands more than likely ended up like that after years of little to no medical treatment, because of when she first got it they probably did not have the medicines and therapies like they do now.

I just felt to sorry for her. She has to depend on her son to help her and hubby pawpaw to help her as well.

I showed her my hands and she was like "Yep you have the RA." and asked when I had gotten it and told her I had it since I was 18 months old and she said "poor you, I am sorry."

 

joonie39143.9464467593Joonie, I take care of so many people such as you describe and it is very sad.
Even though the treatments of today are not the greatest, at least they are
way better than they used to be and we have way more hope. I do believe
there will be vast improvements in rheumatoid and other autoimmune
disease treatments in the future, hopefully in our lifetimes. For now, all we
can do is do the best we can to take care of ourselves. I hope everyone is
having a good weekend. I am on my way back to do 3 12 hour days at my
traveling job (one day off, ack!!).Scares me.  I am so afraid that is what I am going to look like - the way it is progressing.  I still cannot find any sense of acceptance
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