If you are a perfectly healthy young energetic person you will still have had bad days… Bad hair days, days where you just feel like life is unfair and days when you just want to snuggle up under the duvet and forget the world around you even exists. It’s perfectly normal, it happens us all! However it happens to those with arthritis more than your average person of a healthy body and mind. That’s our normal. That just what we have come to accept, except for when we don’t that is.
Being positive, seeing the glass is half full any other
sayings you can think of might be a help on some of these bad days. Yes, you’re
right… I am not dying, I have friends and family, I won’t go hungry and I have
a roof over my head… yes! Ultimately I am a very lucky person. Yet I don’t feel
that way when it feels like someone is trying to pull me limb from limb and you
know what? That is ok.
People always say things like ‘Don’t let it get you down’ or
‘Sure it could be worse’. Really they are trying to help you, get you feeling
better but this kind of talk can make you feel like you aren’t allowed be
upset. Like you can’t ever feel sorry for yourself. Well something I learned in
the last 8 years is that it’s essential to throw a bit of a pity party every
now and then! In fact I will go as far as saying you are entitled to one every
once in a while.
Arthritis causes severe pain in the joints, it causes
fatigue and doing simple tasks can prove really difficult. It’s something
you’ll struggle with every day and you are most definitely at some point going
to feel like that’s a bit unfair!
Last week I woke up after, maybe, an hour of proper sleep,
my entire body ached. I wasn’t up for anything. It wasn’t even being in
college, sitting in a lecture. That’s not the tough bit. It’s the getting out
of the bed, pushing past the pain to get dressed, fix my hair, put my shoes on,
make a cup of tea, walk to the bus, carrying my bag, climbing stairs…… these
were the things getting in my way. The little things that most people can take
for granted were the things I couldn’t manage last week. Not without a lot of
pain and discomfort. First I was rational, I thought, get some rest, take a
painkiller and drink plenty of water… I’ll be grand! I always am… but as the
hours went by and the pain didn’t go away I just felt frustrated, annoyed,
angry and then finally upset.
This kind of pain is usually referred to as a flare up. It’s
when the pain is worse than the average everyday pains. I am certainly aware
that they will happen, it’s inevitable. It is part of my life but it can be so
boring, sitting in bed or on a couch all day watching TV. It can be ever so frustrating when you have
to miss out on something and it can be downright depressing when you’re by yourself
all day in pain and you can’t even text for long because your fingers look like
cocktail sausages because they are so swollen. And that’s when the tears come
and the poor me banner is taken out. It’s not a matter of wanting anyone to
pity me, it’s usually a party for one but it’s an important part of the process
for me especially if I have been having a number of flare ups quite close
together.
It is a few minutes where I feel I can say without laughing
about it….’having this disease sucks!’. I wish I didn’t have it, it does affect
my life and it does makes things harder for me. It’s about giving myself
permission to be a little mad at the world for a few minutes, for being
frustrated that my disease is invisible, no one knows what’s going on inside,
it’s just about quite honestly saying, ‘Fuck you’ to arthritis and all that
goes with it… at least for a few minutes. Then someone gives me food, I get
some sleep and things don’t seem quite as bad when I wake up. I’m back to
normal or at least my version of normal.
