My Rheumatoid Arthritis Journey, Struggles, Depression, Isolation and of Course PAIN!

Everyone's journey in life is different. Many times life doesn't quite turn out the way you expected. I will start my story in 1997. I was a newlywed living with my in laws trying to save enough money to build our home. After a year & a half  of saving and doing some of the work on our home ourselves to save some money our home was finished and ready to move into. It was an exciting time for us both. Our new life together was about to begin!. Not too long after being married I got pregnant with my daughter ( she was planned of course, i just didn't know marriage,a new home and babies was all gonna happen so young. but what can i say when its right you just know and age don't matter)  I couldn't wait to be a mother!
I was working full time as cash office associate at a major retail store. I liked my job. I pretty much made up my own hours and it involved a lot of typing and repetitive motion. The repetitiveness of the job was really taking a toll on my wrists and hands and I found most days wearing wrist splints and taking a lot of NSAIDs to combat the chronic inflammation. I thought I had carpal tunnel from the excessive typing. I mean heck what else could it be , right?
As time goes by I start having a ton of pain and inflammation in my knees to the point that bending them was excruciatingly painful. Not much longer after that the pain had moved to my feet as well. I was 22 at the time with no clue what was going on.
I have had mysterious pain like this on and off since I was 15 yrs old. It always got brushed off as "growing pains" but this pain was worse and seemed to only get worse after the birth of my daughter which lead me on a wild goose chase of different specialist trying to find out what was going on.
My daughter had just turned  2 years old and after seeing many different doctors with no answer I finally got my answer on May 24, 2002.  The words that would change my life forever. The words that would throw my life upside down!  It was Rheumatoid Arthritis!! To say I was shocked was an understatement!!!  Isn't that for "old people" my little nieve mind thought?
How could this be happening? What was in store for my future? On the day I got my diagnosis I was told by the Rheumatologist that I would need to find a different job because my current one was too stressful for my joints to handle. So not only am I in shock scared and in pain I was gonna have to quit the job I love?? Too much was changing way to fast!
. When I was first diagnosed with RA the pain was mostly in my hands,wrists,knees& feet. As the years went by my doctors found it very hard to get my RA under control as it had spread to even more joints than just a few years back and was now in my hands,feet,wrists,knees,elbows,ribs hips ,shoulders ,jaws ,spine and I've had it in my sternum and collar bone as well. (The collar bone flare sent me to the ER as the pain was so intense just trying to breathe was impossible) Simply put my pain was rapidly getting outta control!
How bad can the pain be you might wonder? So bad I was at the point in my life ( jumping up to age 30 now) that simple things in life became impossible. Pulling up the covers by myself or rolling over in bed...simple right? Not for me! I couldn't sleep and pulling the covers up on myself in bed felt like every tendon and muscle where being ripped out of my arms. I could no longer dress myself because the pain was so excruciating simple acts such as putting on a bra or putting on your clothes made my body scream in pain & sent me into sobbing tears!
I could no longer lift my 3 yr old son at the time and his bedroom was upstairs. I would have to call
my mom to come to my house to walk up the flight of stairs and lift him out of his crib!!! I'm his mother do you know how awful and helpless that feeling is???? Can you even begin to comprehend that kind of pain I was living with with no end in site no breaks just constant unbearable pain that even the strongest pain meds could not touch!!!! I wanted to die!!! I felt better off dead and I had many days I just couldn't even make myself get out of bed I just wanted to sleep so I didn't have to think or feel but even sleeping was almost impossible.  It's extremely difficult to fall asleep when every inch of your body was in so much pain!
I felt so isolated for no one in my family had anything like this (which only added to my shock when diagnosed). Why me? What would be come of me? I remember some days I would be so depressed I would lay in bed and just stare at the wall. I had cried,been angry and then reached the point i was just numb. Not numb to the pain ( I wished) but so numb emotionally. I can't really explain it. It is beyond sadness,depression tears it was me falling apart and I honestly thought I was on the brink of a nervous breakdown!  How am I suppose to deal with all this pain the rest of my life???
By the time I was 30 I had my first cane and first raised toilet seat. I had wrist splints and knee braces Long long before age 30. You know how everybody jokes that you are getting old because you turn 30? Well this was all to real. This was no joke. My life was falling apart and I had no control over it.
It wasn't till I was 33 that I got any relief what so ever. ( at this point I had been completely disabled for 3 years). The multiple steroid injections, steroid IV drips, chemotherapy medicines ,herbs, special nutritional response testing ( which was very expensive and helped NONE! total waist of time) was not working not one ounce of relief from this nightmare that was now consuming my life. Finally Enbrel came into my life. The answers to my prayers.  The drug i had been searching for half my life! It was the ONLY thing up to that point since I was 15 that helped ease the pain.
Things were starting to finally look up!
Hold on, don't  get too used to being without pain cause just when you think you have it figured out....life throws you yet another curve ball!!I'm now 34 & Enbrel has been taken from me due to it causing "drug induced Lupus". I was and still am devastated.  i started having fibromyalgia and lupus like symptoms.  the lupus symptoms go away once you are off the drug and it gets out of your system but guess what else happens when the drug gets out of your system?  PAIN RETURNS ONCE AGAIN!  I have a Rheumatologist appointment very soon to see what medicine will be tried next. My future is once again uncertain and my pain has returned. You don't know how scary this feeling is. To find the one drug that worked in all these years and to have it taken from me. I was and still am heart broken. What does my future hold I don't know but I do know this i will always fight back. I won't give in to RA. I won't let it defeat me!!

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