Posts Tagged Disease
Ignorance is Bliss
Posted by My RAD Life in RA/RAD, Symptoms, Uncategorized on April 6, 2012
St. Petersburg, Russia
It’s amazing the pain you can tolerate when you think you’re fine. Once my wrists felt better, I simply ignored them. Occasionally they would feel sore, but it wasn’t too bad, it wasn’t waking me up at night.
Needless to say, I didn’t remain pain free for long. I began feeling pain in my feet. The bottom of my feet would just be sore. I blamed this on bad shoes (I’m cheap AND I like heals, a deadly combo!) and working out. It wasn’t so bad anyway. Plus, I was planning a mega-vacation to Europe, so I was blissfully distracted.Looking back now, I’d say I had a major flare up during my first week in Europe. At the time, I thought I was walking too much and had brought the wrong shoes. Looking back, I can feel more empathetic and forgiving toward myself about how painful it was to walk around. At the time, I bought gel inserts and foot cream and told myself to “suck it up.”
Istanbul, Turkey
I spent a week walking around with painful, swollen feet. The days we walked a lot were bad. I had to take breaks, which was so unlike me that I would beat myself up over it. Every chair or bench I saw, I’d take a break (the museums in Russia are huge-I thought I’d never make it through the Hermitage!). The days we were off our feet, I felt much better. Luckily, I was distracted by Russia, with all its charm and beauty. And, mysteriously, by the second day in Greece, my feet were much better. I felt normal (of course, I was rapidly developing a new pain threshold and standard of normal).I got back from Turkey rejuvenated, energetic and ready to start training for a half marathon.
Hindsight is a Bitch
Posted by My RAD Life in RA/RAD, Symptoms on April 4, 2012
Hi all, especially those in the RAD new community I’ve found myself a part of. I’m a month into life with RAD and I’ve decided to start a blog about my experiences in case any of you may be able to benefit from hearing about them. I think it’s important to start at the beginning. I’m talking pre-diagnosis. I’m talking the things you look back on and think, wow, I should have gone to the doctor. I should have known.
Oh well, hindsight, as they say, is a bitch 20-20. So, with the benefit of what I know now, I can tell you that my symptoms emerged in my wrists, at age 27, more than a year ago. It started harmlessly enough, my right wrist became painful to move. At the time, I was doing a lot of computer work – graphic design, typing, you name it – so I diagnosed the problem as carpal tunnel syndrome from using my mouse too much. It flared while working on my computer, justifying my hypothesis. I felt it during yoga, especially downward dog.
No, that's not me (though I wish it was!), it's Gretchen Bleiler.
Then my left wrist hurt. Symmetrically. Despite that, I thought that the left wrist was a snowboard injury from a hard fall. So I bought a wrist brace and wore it snowboarding (it didn’t seem to help).
Then it became Painful. Painful with a capital P. Wake me up at night painful. Losing sleep painful. Creeping from my wrist to my finger joints painful. But the pain would be worse at night and in the mornings and fade during the day, so it was manageable. I could still work, I could still workout. It was annoying, but it wasn’t life threatening. So I complained to my mom, and saw an acupressure practitioner, and thought maybe I was going crazy.
Then a couple of months later, it just got better. My job had changed a bit and I was doing less design work, so I thought that was proof that this whole ridiculous wrist pain was just some computer-overuse issue.
Looking back now, maybe going to the doctor at this stage wouldn’t have done much good, but who knows? I’ve read a lot of your (the RA community) stories about mis-diagnosis, and perhaps that’s what would have happened. I think it’s a blessing considering the amount of pain I was in during that flare, but I don’t have any permanent damage in my wrists.
My RAD Life 