Living With the Persistent Pain of Arthritis

The day of my father-in-law’s funeral I was in agony, both emotionally and physically. My feet and ankles were so inflamed, they felt like someone had taken a hammer to them.

Thinking it was just a bad case of runners’ feet, I told myself that this too shall pass. But within the week, my wrists were about the same size as my forearms. And then my sciatica flared up. I couldn’t walk, sit or stand up. Even lying down hurt.

It took two months of pain and night sweats for my doctor’s diagnosis to really sink in: I had rheumatoid arthritis.

Rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that causes the joints to become inflamed, is one of the more serious and disabling types of the 100 or so rheumatic diseases. Like osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease and the most prevalent type of arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis can lead to cartilage deterioration.

The economic impact is nearly as painful as the disease itself.

When the $15 billion a year that arthritis sufferers rack up in medical care is factored with lost productivity, the resulting tab is estimated at $65 billion a year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s a bill that Americans could be paying for quite a while because there are no known cures for arthritis.

Although arthritis behaves differently from one person to the next, women’s reactions are different in some ways from men’s. During pregnancy, for example, it’s not unusual for the disease to go into remission, experts say. Women may also need extra calcium to overcome the calcium loss associated with some drugs prescribed for arthritis.

Unless you’re among the fortunate 5% of sufferers whose arthritis goes into spontaneous remission, your options boil down to one: disease management. How well you do, your degree of well-being and mobility depend on how you take care of yourself. When it comes to arthritis, particularly osteo- and rheumatoid arthritis, either you do or you don’t.

If you don’t, you could wind up crippled, so experts say it’s important to begin somehow to work your body regularly, follow a drug regimen if necessary, and generally take good care of your body.

Getting diagnosed could make the difference between being able to go on--with moderate restrictions--with everyday life or becoming a wheelchair user or bedridden. Severe cases, the experts say, can shorten life expectancy.

Early warning signs are prolonged fatigue, morning stiffness and inflammation; six weeks of those symptoms signal that it’s time to see your doctor.

It’s difficult to pinpoint who will get the disease, but generally, the experts say, it’s in the genes. As in my case, arthritis often kicks in during times of great stress.

Challenging the long-held notion that bed rest is the best remedy for inflamed joints, many medical experts now contend that loss of function among arthritis sufferers actually stems from inactivity and deconditioning.

“Exercise is an effective nonpharmacological therapy that improves both pain and function in people with arthritis,” an American Medical Assn. study concluded last year.

While resistance training could be helpful in treating rheumatoid arthritis, patients first have to be evaluated by a doctor to determine the range of motion and muscle loss so a program can be tailored to their specific needs, experts say.