Arthritis Awareness Month - Part 1

Yeah, so as you may have guessed from the title this post is not country music related. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do this post or not because of that fact, but have obviously decided to do it. As you may or may not be aware, May is Arthritis Awareness Month. This is something that is very close to my heart and so I wanted to do something in honor of it, to try and get some facts and information out to people who may not know much about it. This may be something I do every once in a while, a post about something completely unrelated to country music, but rest assured that this is still very much a country blog. I’ll be getting back to that when this is done. I’m hoping that you will all indulge me and keep reading.

I’m going to go into some facts and whatnot after the break, but before that I suppose I should explain why I wanted to do this and why it’s so important to me. I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in the late fall/early winter of 2000 when I was a senior in high school. 17 years old and I had no idea that younger people could get arthritis; I assumed that that was something people got when they got older. Once the shock and denial wore off, I decided that I wanted to learn as much about it as possible. In the years since my diagnosis I’ve learned a lot about it and in the process have met some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, people I never would’ve met otherwise. They are the reason why I wanted to write this.

Before I continue it occurs to me that I really started to fall in love with country music around the time of my diagnosis. I’d liked it before then, but hadn’t loved it until around them. Which goes to show that I can find a way to connect country music to just about anything. Interesting the way that worked out. Now back to the issue at hand…

So, here’s something that I find crazy. Usually when you hear people talking about arthritis, they’re talking about one of two different kinds: osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Those are by far the most common, but one of the first things I learned about arthritis was that there are actually over 100 forms of it. I was stunned to learn that and I couldn’t begin to tell you what the differences between them all are.

Another thing I learned early on is that children can have arthritis, called juvenile arthritis. The Arthritis Foundation says that there about 300,000 children in the United States with a form of arthritis. Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis being the most common form, though there are others. I hate that anyone has to deal with this, but it breaks my heart that there are kids who have it. Some of them will grow out of it; many will have never experienced a life without pain.

I’m going to be focusing primarily on rheumatoid arthritis, or RA as I’ll be referring to it as from here on out, namely because that’s the one I’m most familiar with. First things first: the difference between RA and osteoarthritis, which I’ll be calling OA for the sake of simplicity. Out of the two, OA is the more common and is what people usually think of when they think about arthritis. OA is also more closely related to age than RA is, that is, it can be a natural byproduct of the aging process. Other causes of OA include injury to the joint and obesity. According to the Arthritis Foundation, OA affects more than 27 million Americans.

In contrast, RA is said to affect 1.3 million Americans, just about 1% of the population. This next point might just be the most important and one that I wish everyone knew and it is this: RA has nothing to do with age. Ask anyone who got diagnosed at a young age, at some point someone has told them that they were too young to have arthritis. And that has got to be one of the worst things to say to someone who has it. It’s either going to depress them or make them angry, so it’s best to avoid saying it. Anyone can get RA; young, middle-aged, older – anyone.

The second thing I wish everyone knew: RA is an autoimmune disease, which is when the immune system mistakenly attacks itself. At the end of this, I’m going to be posting a link to a 60 second guide to RA that someone else did and I strongly encourage you to check it out because the way he explains it is perfect. Basically, your immune system is supposed to fight off bad things like infections or viruses, but with autoimmune disease it pretty much goes completely haywire and turns on the body itself. No one knows why it happens. I always thought of it as a kind of civil war taking place within the body. There’s a ton of autoimmune diseases out there and usually, once you have one, you’ll end up collecting others.

Each joint in your body is surrounded by and lined with a thin membrane called the synovium. This is what prevents your bones from rubbing against each other and this is what the immune system attacks when you have RA. This causes inflammation; inflammation that ends up eating away at the synovial fluid and cartilage between the joints. Which as you might’ve guessed is a bad thing; it leads to things like deformity and disability.

RA is systemic, so it’s taking place in the body as a whole. A lot of times in the early phases of the diseases, you’ll mainly see it only affecting a couple of joints, but it is very much a problem for the body in general. It’s a progressive disease, so if left untreated it will eventually make its way to every joint in the body. Here’s a little secret that I don’t think too many people know: it can affect your organs, eyes, skin and blood vessels. Because your immune system is so out of control, people with RA are much more likely to not only get infections but infections that can be very serious. People can die from RA.

That right there might be the biggest thing that the general population doesn’t know, probably because RA is a chronic, long-term disease and people seem to think that if it’s chronic, it can’t be that serious. I lost a dear friend of mine to this disease a couple of years ago, give or take. So, yes, it can be extremely serious.

That said, the tricky thing about RA is how much it can vary from person to person. Some people will die from this; others will be placed in nursing homes long before their time due to all the damage and havoc that their illness will wreak on their body. On the other hand, there will be people who will go into complete remission where the symptoms will disappear and the disease won’t be active. It is indeed possible to live a very active life with RA. Last year a man by the name of Jeffrey Gottfurcht became the first person with RA to summit Mount Everest. Which I find absolutely amazing.  Look him up if you’re not familiar with his story, or if you’re in need of some inspiration.

The above examples represent the extremes of life with RA. The vast majority of people are going to fall somewhere in the middle. RA tends to be very unpredictable; you never really know how you’re going to feel. I think for most people, they’ll have a mixture of good days and downright horrific days and all sorts of in between days. The way you feel one day could be the complete opposite of the way you’ll feel the next. Sometimes you start off the day doing very badly and it gets better, sometimes it’s the other way around. One thing I’m still having a hard time adjusting to so many years after my diagnosis is how quickly things can change. It’s not something I can really explain. I think the only way to fully get it is to experience it yourself.

I started this off wondering if I’d have enough to say and now I realize that I have a lot to say about this. And so, for the sake of length, I’m breaking this up into two parts. This one was more general, I guess. I’ll go into more of how it feels and how it’s treated in the second part. And then I’ll get back to focusing on what this blog is really about, which is of course country music. If you actually took the time to read this, thank you so much. I really want people to know all this stuff, I want people to be more informed and most importantly I want people to care. Maybe even be inspired to help in some way. Too many people have to deal with this and all the pain and fatigue that comes with it and it shouldn’t be that way. We need a cure, we need to figure this out and maybe even figure out a way to keep people from getting it in the first place. So again, I thank you for reading. Stay tuned for part two and then it’s back to album reviews.

Any and all of the facts found in here are either from my own knowledge or one of these sites:

The Arthritis Foundation - http://www.arthritis.org/

Rheumatoid Arthritis Guy, specifically this post where he explains RA in 60 seconds. One of the best breakdowns of it I’ve ever seen. - http://www.rheumatoidarthritisguy.com/60-second-guide-to-ra/

Rheumatoid Arthritis Warrior, great site, lots of information - http://rawarrior.com/