Branded du dudu du du du..

I've been branded once. My sister, Kristy, stuck a metal skewer into a gas heater until it was glowing red and pressed it to the back of my thigh. You can still see the faint circle of scar back there, but there was also another scar - in my head. I'll never forget that. She laughed and ran around the house singing the theme song of "Branded" as I cried. So, when I tell you that when I have a flair-up, and it feels like a hot branding iron in my joint, trust me that I know what I'm talking about. The flair-ups are easy to spot - Swollen, red joints that have splotches and are rendered motionless by the shear volume of inflammation in the joint. They are not pleasant.

You can't always see pain. When you see stitches, an open gash; a scrape or bruise you can somehow sympathetically feel that they somehow hurt because at one point in your life you have experienced it. RA pain is a bit different depending on the stage. I escaped the first stage without a diagnosis. The comings and goings of dull, aching pains in my ankles and shoulders. Ice and elevation the cure for those fleeting few days of inconvenience.

When I was finally diagnosed in October 2011, I had already progressed to the next stage of the disease. I was having daily pain. Unable to sleep a full night, I would take Tylenol PM to put me to sleep, but I would still wake up in the morning feeling, and looking, like I had an hour's sleep. My knees feel like I've been kneeling on concrete for days, and there is rarely any relief to that feeling. When I wake in the morning, I'm so stiff that it takes 20 minutes before I can walk somewhat normally - I do take that time to waller in bed, just flexing my joints as I try to get a few more moments of rest. When I hit the floor, the balls of my feet feel like I've stepped on gravel with bare feet. I then have to walk that off. My most recent X-Rays show that I have 3 affected joints - my toes, my left knee, and my right bird finger. These joints never give up.

Anti-inflammatories and DMARDS do nothing to stop this pain. They merely calm the flair-ups. If I've been hateful recently (and you don't deserve it), then I'm sorry. I finaly got my prescription for Enbrel, so we'll see how I feel in a few weeks :)