Shoulds don't work for me...

There's a part of me that feels silly, sitting down to write a blog post at this stage. This is only partly due to the fact that as I write, I'm sitting on my couch wearing pyjamas - that can only be described as reminisant of the ones Bridget Jones wears during her All by Myself meltdown - fluffy pink bed socks and an over-sized dressing gown. See, this doesn't embarrass me. Despite the fact that I'm still in my twenties, this is pretty much an average Saturday night for me. After years of thinking "I should be doing what other people my age are doing" or more realistically "I should pretend that I want to be doing what other people my age are doing" I have come to the realisation that "shoulds" just don't work for me. I'm happy sitting on my couch in cozy clothes on a Saturday night, and if I'm happy, why "should" I be doing something else.

But I digress...

The reason I feel silly writing a blog post at this stage, is that it has been *gulp* five months since I posted anything. I gave up even pretending I was going to post soon, because I could tell it just wasn't going to happen.

When I last wrote, I was incredibly sick. Both the joint symptoms and systemic symptoms of my arthritis were out of control... things got pretty hairy there for a while. I was having trouble... well doing anything really. Even getting up to go to the bathroom was a huge struggle, especially as I was having frequent falls. Simple tasks had become incredibly difficult and solid food had become a distant memory as the pain and stiffness in my jaw made chewing near impossible (eating icecream and soup for months on end, is not as fun as it might seem!)
Added to this, I'm prone to periods of insomnia and the constant pain was making falling/staying asleep hard to say the least. Crazy Helen was starting to emerge...

But, it's not all bad news. In fact, what happened next was about the best news I could have hoped for. I'm currently in a partial theraputic remission*

A stint on pain killers helped with the pain levels and sleep problems (thus saving my sanity!) but they couldn't do much to help the systemic symptoms. Among other symptoms, I had to have several weeks off work as the inflammation in my voice made shifts on the phone impossible (no-one ringing a helpline in crisis really wants to talk to creepy-croaky voice lady) and I had near constant double vision.

Fortuately my nurse managed to get me switched from Humira injections to Enbrel. Up until this point, I'd been told there were no more medical options for me. My doctor (and my nurse too, really) believed my condition was drug-resistant. Therefore switching me was going to have no effect. My nurse insisted on at least trying (she told me later that after arguing with my doctor he ended up saying "fine, do what you want, but it's not going to work.")

12 hours after the first Enbrel injection I was in a partial remission - at which point my nurse became pretty much my favourite person in the world! For a year before this, I hadn't been able to leave the house without Molly Stick, but the day after the injection I walked down the stairs unaided. Of course, my dad wouldn't actually let me go anywhere without Molly. I was all for going for a run that first morning, but he wasn't so keen on having to rescue me, if I collapsed!

It became clear that I wasn't in a full remission - I still had symptoms, though for the most part they were pretty minor. Every so often I'd wake with full on swelling and pain, but mostly they were at a manageble level.

Now... this post is getting a bit long, so I will pick up the story from here in my next post... (in the next installment I go to pain clinic and almost get murdered by an ipod!)

I'll just skip to my point. Part of the reason I've left it so long between posts is the number of shoulds piling up in my brain - "I should have posted already" "I should write my post tonight, despite the fact that I'm too tired" "I should have something more interesting to say" "I should be able to write this more coherantly" "I should do the housework/washing/cooking before I post" "I should write something BRILLIANT to make up for the long absence."

Well, I'm done with shoulds. I refuse to be paralysed by shoulds.

So there it is - I'm a Bridget Jones look-a-like, slack blogger... and I'm proud of it.

Thanks for reading

Little Miss Autoimmune :-)

*Not sure if everyone will understand the word "remission" in this context. I'll include a definition in my next post.