What the pamphlets didn't teach me

Some of you are probably familiar with the story of my diagnosis. The day I met with a rheumatologist, he sat with me in a cold, clinical waiting room and read to me from a selection of pamphlets with cheesy names like, "So You Have Rheumatoid Arthritis," and "Rheumatoid Arthritis: An Overview." The doctor presented this literature as if I were a kindergartener circled up for storytime - facing the cartoony pictures of people in pain towards me, he hovered over each word with his pen as he read out loud.

I still have those pamphlets somewhere, and I am often tempted to dig them out. Those little handouts with their idiotic drawings did absolutely zero to prepare me for what was to come. I expected to feel pain and stiffness in the mornings. I expected to work with my doctor to find a medication that would solve all my problems and let me live "a perfectly normal, active life," as one pamphlet cheerfully promised. What I did not expect was to live in constant pain for two years, watching my life crumble into pieces as I struggled just to get through a normal day. Nobody mentioned that I would need my boyfriend to lift me out of bed, walk me to the shower, dress me, and tie my shoes. That I might not be immediately "fixed" would have been nice to know.

Backwards and Side to Side

I've spent hours every week trying to write a blog post. I have six partially-finished, wholly abandoned drafts sitting in my posts list. Somewhere along the way, my motivations and inspirations fell off the face of the earth, and try as I might, I can't seem to recover them.

Today my inspiration stems from my heavy, heavy heart. I witnessed the end of a very close friendship, with a person I admire and adore with everything I have (I will call him Friend). He was probably the first person to become a constant reader and vocal supporter of this blog, though I don't believe he is a follower any longer. He has never been anything less than an unwavering foundation through some of the worst of my struggles with this stupidly persistent disease.

I am in awe of the process of a decomposing friendship. All I can do, lately, is watch as my personal relationships crumble around me. I had some vague feeling of dread about this particular friendship, as if I were watching it burst into pieces but possessed absolutely no useful abilities for stopping the inevitable explosion. Explode it did, into a million childish, horribly intimate jabs at each other, a thousand terrible names and words and feelings.

Defeated

After my Rheumiversary in August, November 8th served as the next most important date on my RA calendar. On November 8th, 2011, I seriously began RA treatment under the watchful gaze of a rheumatologist. As that date approached, arrived, and sped quickly away this year, I found myself falling further and further into what often feels like an endless pit. After a year of treatment, shouldn't I feel better? After a year of pumping all these injections and pills into my body, shouldn't my RA show some kind of response? 

I've spent the last three months lost in my own thoughts. I have slept, awoken, learned, traveled...I have lived in constant physical pain. While this is not unusual for me, the pain has become so much more than just a frustration. As I counted down to my one year treatment benchmark, my pain turned into a menace. It haunted all my social interactions, alienating me from almost everyone I value. It trailed behind me as I tried to enjoy my travels, and all the experiences and vacations I had the pleasure to embark upon in 2012. It kept me from doing the simplest things -  taking notes for school became a discouraging impossibility. Getting up to turn in my daily assignments felt like a monstrous, hopeless effort. Worst of all, I didn't have the positivity, the hope and the spirit to continue pushing forward. 

When I started this blog, and started my journey through RA, I insisted continuously that I would never let this disease define who I am. I declared that I would not let it beat me. 

It has. I haven't written a blog in three months because I am so ashamed to admit, to myself, to my readers, to my friends and loved ones, that I feel utterly and completely defeated by my illness. One day, struggling to work on an assignment for my philosophy course, I turned to DJ and cried, "I hate how my arthritis has taken over my whole life." He looked at me for a moment and said, "It IS your life."Nothing has ever been so torturously true.