25.5%? Not this time.

One of the readers of the last post messaged me to let me know that only 25.5% of the content related to my arthritis while 26.9% related to music. Let's see if I can redress the balance a little in this post.

I said at the beginning that I did not want to turn this into a"poor me" kind of blog but I have had a really bad day, so I thought that it would share it with you to give a kind of flavour of what arthritis can be like.

Last night I woke up several times and was in pain every time. It seemed that almost every part of my body ached - not in a flu-like way as I had not temperature but in a muscular and joint sort of way.

The worst parts were my knees and arms, my left arm in particular. Turning over in bed was agony and, because of my knees, going to the toilet was a nightmare and I had to hold on to lots of things in order to climb the few stairs that I needed to. Coming back down was even worse.

When I eventually decided to get out of bed I had very little motivation to do anything so, once I had got dressed, I lay down on the bed again for another half hour or so.

Our bedroom is in our basement so, before I went upstairs I took a couple of painkillers. This usually settles the pain down but it usually takes an hour or so to kick in. This time, however, the only relief from pain was in my knees. I still had pain in my back, shoulders, upper arm (especially the left), wrists and fingers. Apparently the muscular pain in my arms is also caused by arthritis as is the pain I am feeling in my lower legs.

We are off to another festival, in Portugal this time, and had packing to do. With a massive amount of help from Marian this was accomplished but I had to have another lie down afterwards.   

I had to get bloods taken today and Marian drove me. During the journey to the doctors I had a couple of incidences of brain fog, another symptom, which made it difficult to get words and full sentences out. I'm only glad that I was not driving as I have no idea if I could have managed to concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing.

As I type this my left upper arm is extremely painful and I find that I keep making mistakes in my typing - possibly the brain fog again.

That has been today, and I must stress that I am not like this every day and that most days are much better than this. I have only been taking my new meds for a couple of weeks and, hopefully, things will improve once they kick in properly, although that could be two or three months down the road.

Hopefully I have not bored you with today's run down but I feel that it is important to let people know that I do have some days when everything is a struggle. Tomorrow is another, and hopefully, better day.

My next post should be back to normal when I stray off topic and let you know about some of the other thing I do in order to LIVE with arthritis! Hopefully it will be a bit more cheerful that this one.

In the meantime I really would appreciate it if you could all share this so that I can reach a larger audience.

Take care everyone.

Cheers,

Rob

Edit. I felt much better the next day.

Comments

  1. Anonymous24 September 2024 at 23:40

    This day sounds absolutely awful Rob, wishing you better days. I hope you enjoyed Portugal and the festival. Do you find the warmer climate can help or does it make no difference? Keep on with the blogs they are "enjoyable" as I like hearing how you cope with life and your illness. It's admirable how you are still attending festivals and gigs.
    You take care.
    Christine

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nigel25 September 2024 at 00:24

    Sorry to hear you had a bad day Rob. Hopefully the warmth of the Portuguese sun will warm your bones and provide some relief. See you next week.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous25 September 2024 at 04:15

    Rob, when you need to rest it's important to do so. You already know that there is life with RA, and I can tell you that there is a good chance for remission when they get your meds right. It takes time. When you feel attacked all over your body, as you describe, it might be helpful to have a depo steroid injection? You are on your way to Portugal now and the music will be a tonic I'm sure. Have fun!

    ReplyDelete

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