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Rheumatoid Arthritis can lead to many painful symptoms that can affect your whole body.  How do you cope!

Do you hurt so much you wonder if it’s possible for pain to actually be this intense, relenting, powerful and debilitating.  Well this is what having Rheumatoid Arthritis does to you and I.  That’s right, its victims which are many.  Anything that can hurt someone as much and as long means we are its victims.  Victims of its devastation which has become our constant companion, something that touches us someway every day.

This is how this disease works.  It targets, set forth and attack those in its path.  It alters life, devastates life and it turns lives upside down for each and everyone of us.  Though it’s true some may not be as devastating as others but we have all been affected just the same.  It leaves us all picking up the pieces as we’re trying hard to hold our families together, our jobs and everything around us intact.  As it slowly takes us on, we’re fighting to stay ahead but the battle is hard.

The battle:  Battling for us is dealing with the pain that won’t go away, fatigue that catches us off guard and all of the unexpected conditions that may sneak up on us.  We’re battling guilt for something that we can’t control but non-the-less it takes over our minds because we’re not forgiving ourselves for falling short in so many aspects of our lives.  Is it our fault, it is not but tell that to our guilt ridden minds. Guilt, that feeling that is so overwhelming.  We’re also battling depression because we feel we’re failing as mothers, fathers, wives, husbands and others because of a disease that we have been saddled with and as much as we know none of this the fault of our own, it does nothing to ease our emotional battle.  The physical pain and emotional pain walks hand in hand each and ever day.

So knowing that our pain is real and how it affects our lives, does it make a difference to anyone.  Does it allow for empathy or a feeling of understanding for us.  Knowing that we’re dealing with something that’s hard to control and the process of controlling it can be brutal should give room for understanding.  Will we always be thought of as people who make too much of what they term “arthritis” or will we some day be known as sufferers of a disease that rip our lives apart and those in it.  Until then, we’re living with what this disease is doing to us without the proper understanding of what it all really, really means.

For all warriors.  Thank you for reading my blog, this is for you.

Be Blessed.