World of Difference

I wake up on the wrong side of my body, the right side, and I know that in about two more minutes the pain will register. Again, I’m wrong—as I count slowly the seconds passing I don’t even make it to sixty before I can feel the nerves to start to fire and the stiffness make itself known. My arm and shoulder shout at me. They tell me that I should have done a better job of sleeping on my left side.

Two wrongs before I even get out of bed to start my day. I don’t have time for any more wrongs, so I jump up quickly-- ripping off the Band-Aid, so to speak. I stand up beside my bed, and slowly raise my right arm above my head. I can move it, which is good.

                                        

The pain starts in my shoulder blade. I can feel it wrap around the curve of my scapula, move up my side, and into my armpit. My shoulder is stiff and feels as if it’s on fire. The pain travels down the top of my arm to my elbow—also affected—and down the side of my forearm into my wrist and fingers. My carpals and metacarpals are slightly swollen and stiff, but the pain associated with moving my fingers or thumb is nothing compared to the feeling in my shoulder blade. I can still make a fist, although it’s nothing akin to the fist I can still make with my left hand.

And through all of this, I smile. I am happy. I am grateful. It’s just not that bad. Nothing I can’t handle. If my joints were screaming, that would be one thing. But they don’t scream—they shout, they huff and puff, they whine. They do not scream.

The last time I had an arthritic attack like this was three (THREE!) years ago. It seemed to affect every joint in my body. I could hardly move. I was always so tired. I went to specialist after specialist. I had test after test and x-ray after x-ray. What they agreed on: it’s arthritis. What they didn’t agree on: what type of arthritis it is. There are over 100 types of arthritis, and the doctors were pretty sure I had one of three of those types. I did physical therapy and instituted a whole regime in my household dedicated to my joints and even took the RA drugs for a while. Then the summer came, and the stress was alleviated and I felt better.

I cannot even begin to describe that feeling—the one where relief sets in where chronic pain once lived. It’s downright spiritual. What tempered it was that I then realized how much I had let the episode control me. I allowed the pain to keep me in bed, to keep my mind occupied with the most primal of thoughts, to keep my emotions on the negative side of the spectrum.

Now this. This is small, minor, an inconvenience. Even better—I know how to fix it. Before I make a move to do anything else in my day, I stand beside my bed and do 30 one-handed (left-handed) jumping jacks, just until the blood starts to move in my body. I head straight to the shower and jump in to water that is as hot as I can stand it. The tension starts to melt away. Throughout the day, I make sure to watch my posture. I make sure to get up and move around for at least five minutes every hour and a half. I try to do as many things left-handed as I can. I eat healthy foods and try to keep from being cold—which is a trigger and difficult in January—except for when I am soaking up sunlight for the vitamin D. I come home and I take my vitamins and I do my special exercises from physical therapy and I drink copious amounts of water. I make sure to get enough sleep and I make J rub different pressure points to disrupt the nerves firing down my arm each night before bed.

Most importantly, however, I stay in the right mindset. This time around, my mind has helped me keep this attack in check, limiting its scope, and will keep it from lingering. Last time, the arthritis was in charge of me. This time, I am in charge of it. I’ve got it under control, and that makes a world of difference. 

This post was written for  Just Write.