I have been going through quite a good patch recently. Just a little hip and knee pain. My ankle was feeling OK too until this afternoon when someone kicked it by accident .(Why is it whenever you have a sore foot, knee, arm etc. someone always knocks you in the place that hurts the most?).
Life has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster recently. The University term is about to start and we are deep in the process of reorganisation at work. It feels chaotic and out of control and I have had to resort to taking work home. I usually try to switch off from work completely when I get home. But an important deadline for a project is looming and there simply are not enough hours in the working day.
Its great that I am feeling so well at the moment, but I worry that all of this will catch up with me and that I am heading for an arthritis flare up. Uncertainty is one of the worst aspects of this disease. It is unpredictable. You can go for months, even years without a major flare up and then you can have several in quick sucession. This was the aspect of the disease which worried me the most when it was first diagnosed. For a while I was scared to plan too far ahead in case I was not well enough to do whatever it was. Now I plan for things, but try to have continguency plans in place. My employer has been very supportive and I know that I have the option of working at home if I feel very unwell. I am also very fortunate to be part of a close knit and very supportive team at work. We are all going through a lot of change so it has been great to laugh (and sometimes cry) about it together. That has not only helped me to cope with my illness but also the recent upheavals.
Stress is my main enemy, as it is in most auto-immune illnesses. Recently my stress levels have been off the scale! However for now I will simply enjoy the fact that I am virtually pain free and try not to dwell on what the future might hold.
