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You are not alone.................

10/25/2012

2 Comments

 
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Life. It seems to get in the way sometimes. Trying to juggle school, friends, family, work, illness and everything in between, I sometimes forget what it is all for. My purpose. This week I recieved a lovely e-mail from a mother whose daughter has been suffering for many years. It could not have come at a better time. It reminded me of how I felt not too long ago. Scared, alone, desperate for answers. I had this disease but couldnt find anyone to relate to. My head was spinning. That is when I decided to start this site. To provide a place were other girls like myself can find hope. Without hope I would not have gotten through all this. I feel more and more like my old self everyday. It is not without sacrafice and sick Carrie is a completely different person than healthy Carrie. I dont get it right all the time, I sometimes do things to my body that I know I shouldnt. But this is how I live a life that still feels normal. A life that is not filled with pain and fatigue. I hope that you all know, we will survive, we must. There is no other option but to go forward. When those around us dont understand what it feels like to writh in pain. To want nothing more than to wake up in the morning with energy. To live a day where the smallest amount of stress doesnt send waves of pain thorough your body. Those moments when you struggle to breathe from inflammation but say nothing as you fear just speaking of it will send you into shock. If I have learned anything, I have learned that only the sick understand what it is to be sick. Others can say they understand, but they dont. It was hard for me to not fault others for this, but now I have learned my purpose. My purpose is to care for the sick in any way possible. Be it as a nurse, as a friend, or as someone who will for the rest of my life, be sick.

2 Comments
whiplash relief oklahoma city link
7/29/2013 09:17:57 pm

I love you post. Its a one kind of motivation for me. I just want to say that I learn one important thing from your post.

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Courtney
6/27/2018 09:40:48 pm

Lord knows I can relate to this post. On my worst days, I tend to find myself getting mad at others who want to compare my RA to their knee pain. Or my mom's friend who has a bad back but is in her 60's and her back issues started in her 50's. She tells me all the time, wait until you get old then you'll know pain, YOU ARE TOO YOUNG TO HAVE THAT: ARE YOU SURE YOU HAVE A SMART DOCTOR (if I had a dollar..), you can't be in pain because how much I see you move, if it causes you pain then why do you do it..

So instead of getting mad, I will choose to educate instead.
1) Trust me, I know pain so well that I could tell you who he sneezed on in the second grade. I am a person who tries to be stoic about their pain. I do not like telling people I have pain because it is annoying and seems weak which I will not associate myself with that word or the cripple word. I am neither. I'm just in pain, consistently every morning and night. Oh, and I wasn't fortunate enough for this to wait until my 50's. I am young. I am in pain and I'm working it. If you were to ask me if my feet hurt, it's like asking every day if the grass is green. Yes. Today tomorrow and the next day. Don't bring it up. I'm trying not to dwell on it until I can find a better regimen to help ease the pain.
2) I am not too young for it. I am 1 in 714 women approximately that have it show its ugly head at a young age. Please don't insult the doctor who I am putting a lot of trust in.
3) I can't stop being a mom, wife, or nurse. I HAVE to move. Moving HELPS me. It isn't a broken bone, bad knee, or ruptured disc. It's ongoing and right now there isn't a cure, just managing symptoms and preventing damage. Pain scares me. Unique in this way, pain means inflammation and joint damage. Everytime I feel pain I go through the emotional roller coaster of if I did anything excessively and if I just caused a life-long deformity. Worry consumes too much of my time because of this.
4) Why do we over eat at Thanksgiving. Because the food is good. I have a hard time refraining from doing something I have always done, that I love to do, that others my age are doing just because I now have RA and will pay for it tomorrow. Sometimes, I argue it's worth it and that's why I do it.


But, as a nurse, this has made me be able to have empathy I never dreamed I could achieve. I now see myself looking at "difficult and angry patients" in a different light and asking myself, "Why?"

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