I bought all the things… oops

How do you “thrive” with rheumatoid arthritis when you are having a severe flare up, crying several times over it because you’re freaking out wondering how you’ll go to work, irrationally lashing out at loved ones, and periodically furling your brow and trying not to vomit because of the overwhelming, mind-numbing, searing pain all over your body? BUYING STUFF!

I am a psychological bore. When things seem “out of control” to me in one way, I try to “control” them in another way. I assume my therapist goes home and seriously rolls his eyes at me after our sessions. Today I spent like… $200 on stuff like storage bins and hat boxes and such from the Container Store and Amazon.com.

You’re welcome, capitalism. You’re welcome ‘murica.

Everyone has their coping mechanisms. Most of the time, mine are really healthy. My desire to organize things when I’m really upset is generally healthy but when I’m REALLY upset it starts to pour off into a serious desire to buy things and then organize… and since I have no money to speak of, this isn’t the best thing ever. But I will say that my partner and I are in legitimately desperate need of the items I bought (including the hat boxes, believe it or not, seeing as I have about 12 fine hats and 0 hat boxes to store them in, which means there are hats laying around and my partner does not like this… nor do I, it’s cumbersome). Okay maybe I did not “NEED” need to get the vintage hat box from Knox Hats to store my favorite hat (I live in NYC and that’s a NYC-based company, isn’t that a gross, hipstery purchase) on ebay but the other cheap hat boxes I got from the Container Store were totes necessary.

Normally when we reorganize and stuff… it involves my… kind of consulting my partner. Seeing as he LIVES here and all. That’s the polite thing to do. 😛 But this time I just bought the stuff myself. I wanted the instant gratification. I didn’t want all the back and forth and what about this color and that texture crap. Hopefully he won’t be mad. Seeing as we have similar tastes and it’ll end in things looking organized and such, my guess is he’ll be happy. Right? Meh? Ut oh.

The emotional ton of bricks of diagnosis and denial

When I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, it was really scary. I had a lot of sad/destructive thoughts…

1. My joints are going to become deformed and I’ll look scary to children. They will think I’m an evil demon witch. That’s 100% definitely going to happen.
2. I’ll need to get my joints surgically replaced. All of them. 5 times over. Definitely.
3. My lifespan is decreased 5-10 years.
4. I have to take chemo medication for the rest of my life. I bet that’s not going to feel very good. The cancer patients don’t seem to enjoy it. I’m going to lose my hair, right?
5. I’m too fat for my crappy joints.
6. I’m going on disability, there’s no way I’ll be able to work.
7. I’ll be stuck on my couch forever, like a hermit, even worse than usual.
8. I’ll be extra bad at sex now.
9. My parents are gonna frrrrrrreak the fuck out.

I also had some really happy thoughts…

1. FINALLY, a diagnosis! Jesus christ, I did it!!! I found it! It took long enough. I know what’s wrong with me! Hooraaaaaay!!!! 😀 😀 😀
2. I can focus on getting better instead of focus on finding out what’s wrong!
3. Now people will believe me! 🙂
4. Now I’ll be able to take medications that treat the illness instead of just the symptoms.
5. It’ll be easier to get pain medication when necessary now that I have rheumatoid arthritis. Fuck you, doctors who never believed me (middle finger + sneer).
6. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get a prescription for weed… (the answer is yes, in some states, I totes could… not in NY State yet but it’ll happen)
7. My parents are gonna be so happy!!! (when I get medicated and feel better)
8. I bet I might be able to actually plan stuff again if the medications work (THIS TURNED OUT TO BE TRUE)
9. Pickles!!! (I wanted to have the same number of happy thoughts as sad thoughts, and I really like pickles)

Obviously, some of my thoughts were real concerns, real joys. Others were ridiculous and stupid. It’s so incredibly complicated when you get that diagnosis after years and years of being sick. I’m still digesting it and it’s been months. My biggest problem now is I periodically insist I don’t have rheumatoid arthritis, and I believe I’m somehow “faking it”. My boyfriend finds this deeply disturbing, as he witnessed me in agony on the couch for extended periods of time, and remembers me having such a difficult/painful time getting into work I’d arrive covered in sweat (he was recounting this to me recently when I asked him to remind me what pre-methotrexate days were like). That is, when I made it into the office at all…

My RA presents with less swelling and stiffness now because I caught it early and treat it very aggressively. In other words, I’m young and taking my drugs so I’m not doing as poorly as some 70-year-old woman who went untreated for 20 years. You’d think this would lead me to understand why my joints aren’t very swollen, but instead, I keep thinking, “Oh, I must not have RA!” That’s a real thought I have fairly often. Regardless of how much pain is in my joints. Or if they are stiff or anything… I am genuinely incapable of squatting all the way and then getting up–and I know that’s a thing most people can readily do all day long if they want to–yet I am typing to you trying very hard to acknowledge that I have the disease I know I have, a disease I’ve been diagnosed with, I’m being treated for, AND the medication is working really well, remember…

Why am I so fucked up, one might ask? Years of doctors not believing that I was in pain when I told them I had headaches and neck pain, that’s why! I was told so many times nothing was wrong with me I started to believe it. Eventually, doctors started figuring out that things were wrong (unrelated to RA, a number of disc herniations in my cervical spine causing me a lot of neck pain, for example, which would have been discovered immediately and I could have done PT for it if anyone bothered to do an MRI… assholes…) but by the time I was getting diagnosed for the pile of health problems I’d been accumulating I’d already developed some fun new assumptions that I am still trying to shake from my subconscious (and semi-conscious) mind.

1. Don’t trust doctors.
2. Doctors don’t trust me.
3. Don’t trust myself/it’s all in my head.

I guess I thought when I was diagnosed everything would be simpler. WRONG. 😛 Things are a lot better but they aren’t simpler. I still have to work through aaaaall my emotional shit. Being initially listened to and subsequently believed by a rheumatologist and getting a diagnosis didn’t suddenly make me trust all doctors… and it didn’t make me think all doctors would believe me if I went to them and told them I had some symptoms. And it certainly didn’t cure me of the “it’s all in my head” problem I’ve developed. I inject myself with methotrexate every week and I’m still saying, “you’re making it up, it isn’t real….” (blank stare) Normal, right?

I am deeeeeeply disturbed! I’ll keep working on it. 🙂