Hope



Hope. It's a very big part of Your Life with Rheumatoid Arthritis. It's something I mentioned specifically in many of the chapters in the first book, Tools for Managing Treatment, Side Effects and Pain. More than that, though, finding a way to connect to hope is the driving force behind the series.

The dictionary defines hope as "the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best." Over my decades of living with RA, through good times and bad times — and really bad times — a belief has quietly and steadily grown within me. It is the belief that hope is central to living with this disease.

When you spend every day with this cantankerous companion called RA, it can be difficult not to get pulled down into the darkness. Sometimes, it's pain that drags you down, other times it is being overwhelmed by medication and medical issues. During the good times, the spectre of a flare can hang over your head like the other shoe, waiting to drop. At first, it can feel as if there are no choices, as if you have been tossed into a roiling ocean and have forgotten everything you ever knew about swimming. So what do you do? Do you drown or do you swim?

And then you talk to someone who's lived with it a little longer. Or you have a good doctor who promises you that they'll fight for you. Or you have a good day where all the crap recedes just enough so you can breathe or think. That's when you start seeing the possibility of a choice. The choice to hope. The choice to have faith that the meds will work or even if they don't, you'll find a way to manage.

It is a start of a belief in yourself. A belief that you are strong enough to get through this. A belief that with your own resilience and the support of your loved ones and your friends with RA, you will be able to take one step after the other and get through this. It is a belief that medical research will find a drug that works for you. A belief that other aspects of your life will help you cope with the crap. And the belief that you are more than RA.

All of this is hope. It is what gets you started down the path of understanding your disease, your options for treatment and what can help you manage the symptoms of RA. Hope is what keeps you going, not giving up until you have found something that works. Hope is the foundation for your quest to live a good life with RA. And believing that it is possible to live well with RA is the start of it all.


The wonderful painting I used at the top of this post was gifted to me after a very rough time by my friend, the wonderful artist Michelle Ottey. It hangs on my yellow kitchen wall, making me smile every day. 

Crossposted on Your Life with RA

Comments

AlisonH said…
Hope is a living, tangible thing in a way I cannot describe when one is very ill. It changes everything.
7:43 PM
Anonymous said…
Wonderful painting and post Lene. Hope is a gift that is there for everyone if we choose to believe in it.
"The problem is not the problem. It is your attitude toward the problem that is the problem."
-Captian Jack Sparrow

*P.S.-Bought your book today and started reading it. Love it already. You are a wonderful writer! Brava My Girl!!! :)
12:38 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weight Gain and Biologics: The Battle of the Pudge

Image
The Seated View has moved .  I am still bringing you the information and support you need to live a better life with RA and chronic illness, just on another site. I'd love for you to visit my new website ! - Lene If you want to leave a comment or question about weight gain, RA, and Biologics and are looking for answers or feedback, please jump to this post on my new site . It has the capability for direct replies, this site does not. You can also reach me at leneATyourlifewithraDOTcom. - Thanks, Lene I’ve known from the beginning that Biologics can affect your weight. When I was on Enbrel, I couldn’t keep weight on, and looked anorexic despite eating like a horse. When I switched to Humira, I started gaining weight. I, who had never before spent much time past a size 6, became a 10. After years of being   literally skin and bones, it suited me just fine.  And then the gaining continued, until finally settling around a weight that requires a 16 pant. Never having been thi
Read more

Real RA: It's Not Just About the Jar

    The drug commercials like to show couples walking on the beach with a dog (it's always a beach with a dog), but real RA is not like that. The image of remission is a return to sparkling health with no lasting effects, but real RA is not like that. This is the first in new series of posts about the ways RA affects your life, the unvarnished version.   Last week, Kelly over at RA Warrior tweeted a link to a post about the silly things people with RA say . It’s a brilliant list of the overly optimistic things that come out of our mouths, such as committing to being somewhere early in the day (impossible because it takes a while to get going when you have RA) or the "me do it" ridiculousness that inevitably brings about a flare in symptoms. Opening jars - or rather, the inability to do so - is often mentioned as the ultimate example in frustration, smacking into your limits and plain humiliation. For Kelly, it's not a jar, it's a set of heavy blinds.
Read more

Farber’s Disease: Could Your Child’s Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Be Misdiagnosed?

Image
Joint inflammation or contractures. Nodules (small lumps under the skin or in other tissues). A weakened or hoarse voice. Children with these symptoms may have been diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) or other types of juvenile arthritis . But do they actually have JIA or do they have Farber’s disease? An equine digression When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. This is an adage in the medical world that encourages doctors to not wander off exploring rare and esoteric reasons for a patient’s symptoms. Because most of the time, that hoof beat of a rash likely isn’t the plague, the joint pain more likely a type of arthritis than the bends (especially if the person has never scuba dived) and you get the picture. But once in a while, it actually is a zebra. And even if it’s first identified as a horse, eventually, the stripes come through. It took five years of my parents running around to different doctors before one finally recognized that I had
Read more