A-Word

I’m trying first of all not to be too frustrated but somehow I lost 100 pictures off my memory card – girls dance competition and our first 10K (luckily I had downloaded a couple onto facebook first).  Oh well, what can you do.

 

Secondly, I am trying to be thankful for all the other things I have that are not as bad as psoriatic arthritis.  But lately that has cast a dark shadow for me and made me feel like I have a split personality.  I am either tired, frustrated, grumpy, slow-moving, non-motivated and in pain.  Or I am running to/from my girls school, training for a 1/2 marathon, and making a million custom signs.  It’s sort of like if I don’t force myself to get into the latter mode, then the former mode takes over and can make me feel depressed.

 

But it really has gotten bad again.  Psoriatic arthritis is the strangest most unpredictable thing.  I wake up feeling exactly like my hands, feet, and back are broken.  Literally broken.  This is TMI, but I can hardly wipe myself when I go to the bathroom because I can’t grasp and bend my hand.  If I did not have to get up and get my kids ready, I’m afraid of what I could turn into.  I would have no interest in getting out of bed because the pain is overpowering.  But once I do, and I hobble around the first couple hours of the morning (and I mean hobble), by mid-day I can often feel 75% better.  It’s never totally gone, and if I sit down for more than 30 minutes, then getting up again feels impossible, but it’s much more tolerable.

 

I take ibuprofen and Aleve all the time, and sometimes they’ll take the edge off.  But according to the rheumatologist, my next step would be a medication called Methotrexate which is a much more drastic medication.  It is given to some cancer patients.  In essence, it suppresses your immune system so it stops attacking itself (which is what my body is doing with the arthritis) which means you are way more susceptible to other illnesses – even life threatening ones.  So that’s a scary trade off to me.  But if it stays this bad, then permanent damage and deformities can be done to my joints if I don’t take something.  I feel like there isn’t really a “best” option.  A few weeks ago when I went to see my Dr., she did give me a steroid shot which, in the past, has taken ALL my pain away for at least a month.  NOT this time – not even 1%.  Strange.

 

I really hate complaining about it because there are so many things that can be worse.  I could be deaf, blind, paralyzed, etc.  But it is also very frustrating because it interferes with my life and I don’t know what to do about it.

 

So you may wonder why or how on earth I would train for a 1/2 marathon.  Well, my arthritis has basically been in remission for a few years.  It has been very subtle and manageable until about 8 weeks ago.  By that point, I figured with enough ibuprofen I could keep running.  And now, I’ve worked this hard and the race is THIS weekend…and my mornings are worse than every!  I feel like I’ll have to get up at 4:00 am to get my body loosened up enough to run at 8:00.  I am so nervous about it.  My joints are so much weaker and have less endurance right now.  But I don’t want to get to this point and NOT do it.  IF it was a night marathon, I think I’d be ok.  But I am a completely different person in the mornings.  Can a miracle happen between now and then?