What Confronting Arthritis Pain Taught Me About Being My Body’s Best Advocate – Healthline
Navigating a chronic condition on your own terms can be challenging, especially when family members think they know best.
The first time I had a rheumatoid arthritis (RA) flare-up, I thought I was having a heart attack. I was 20 years old, a first-year student in college…….
Navigating a chronic condition on your own terms can be challenging, especially when family members think they know best.
The first time I had a rheumatoid arthritis (RA) flare-up, I thought I was having a heart attack. I was 20 years old, a first-year student in college, and 265 miles away from home and my parents. I was in so much pain that I asked my roommate to call my mother.
In my pain haze, I heard my mother instruct my roommate on how to help me. My mother told her to give me two paracetamol tablets and to massage my chest area until the pain reached dull levels. My roommate followed my mother’s instructions but still, the pain persisted through to the next morning.
My mother called the next day to tell me she suspected I had RA. She told me where to go to have my uric acid levels tested and explained that high uric acid levels are sometimes an indicator of RA.
Sure enough, after undergoing testing I was told that I likely had RA.
Looking back now, I was not as scared at the time as I maybe should’ve been. My lack of fear mostly came from knowing that my mother had RA too, as did her mother. Other members of our family had also lived with other types of arthritis.
It didn’t seem like arthritis had kept any of them from living full lives. I found this fact comforting.
My family had a lot of advice about how I should deal with my flare-ups. Most of their advice centered on topical treatments and frequent massages. None of them spoke favorably of painkillers — especially my mother.
My mother works as a nurse and yet, she has always been against taking prescribed medications to treat pain. According to her, painkillers “do more harm than good”. I always followed her advice.
When 2 years passed, and I hadn’t had another flare-up, I thought I was out of the woods. I started to think that my mother was right: Arthritis was an easy condition to manage. I thought that the first flare-up was the worst I would experience. But I soon learned I was wrong.
My second flare-up took place at home. I was 22 years old, enjoying my school break. This pain was different, it wrapped around my entire torso and came in waves. Every 5 minutes, I would double over, my skin soaked in sweat. I sat in bed, wide awake, as my mother’s hands tried to massage the pain away.
I asked my mother for something stronger than paracetamol every 5 minutes. She didn’t …….
