The Fine Line of Arthritis

I hate to have what seems like a sob story about my condition, but I'd be lying if I said it hasn't been on my mind as of late. The more I seem to learn about my Arthritis and how to manage my life around it, the more it seems to develop and come back to bite me in the ass. I've had many people ask me about my condition, so I thought I'd share my story while letting out some steam from the frustration it causes me.

As a lot of you know I suffer from a mild case of Arthritis. Although they diagnosed it in Grade 10 as mild, it sure as hell doesn't feel that way sometimes. The name of my condition is Ankylosing spondylitis. (Does anyone else find it ironic that my favorite dinosaur as a kid was the Anklyosaurus? Damn you Childhood!)

From what my back specialist tells me, it can range from mild to severe in some cases leading to a permanent hunch of the back or even death. That's pretty damn wild when I think about it. Even during my initial diagnosis, my specialist asked me about my ethnicity. When he confirmed that I was Chinese, he told me that it was really rare for a Chinese person to have the condition I have. I know, lucky me right? But apparently it has nothing to do with luck according to my mom. Although my specialist has explicitly made clear that it is a condition that's passed down through your genealogy, she still contends that I have what I have today because I don't eat vegetables, or sleep enough. She'll use each reason interchangeably depending on which one best supports her current argument for nagging me. You can just imagine the deliciously ironic situation when she later realized that she also suffers from back problems. She also requires a prescription for the same painkillers I take for my arthritis, just at a lower dosage.

However, even though we take the same medicine, for whatever reason we get pain in different areas. She experiences pain mainly in her lower back while my pain is all felt within my hips. The best way I can describe it is as if I were a machine and that moving part had no oil/grease at all. Sometimes I'm pretty sure I can feel my hips clicking in and out of place when I walk. I would imagine we have 2 different types of Arthritis, but she's never been clear as to what her doctor has told her about her condition.

With the background of my condition revealed, I can get to the meat and potatoes of my blog. What I have to do to stave off the pain of my Anklyo is take my prescribed 1 ibuprofen twice a day. What makes it a pain in the ass is that I have to take it with or immediately following meals. If I were to forget to take it then, and instead take my medicine well after my meal is digested, then I had better buy a hat and hold the f*** onto it! The indigestion that I experience from such an ill fated decision really puts my Arthritis into the "Peanuts" perspective.

With that said, I find myself always walking a fine line with my Arthritis. It's that little game I play everyday called "When do I take my medicine?" See, if I take it too soon, I might have relief for the early part of my day, but if any pain were to come up later on in the night, there's no reprieve for me. BUT, if I don't take it early enough, especially if I'm getting ready to do something active, then it takes a couple of hours for the medicine to actually kick in. The time I have for being active becomes handicapped and limited while I'm waiting for my stupid medicine to kick in. By far, the most frustrating thing to ever happen to me during basketball.

If anyone reading was thinking "Well then, just take more medicine more often.", you would lose this game immediately. Obviously with a doctor prescribed dosage, there's a healthy amount you can take versus an unhealthy amount. The problem with my case is that if I were to take more, my liver suffers the consequences in the long run. Not that my current dosage of daily painkillers isn't already affecting my liver already, but that's the lesser of the two evils.

The second line I walk with my condition is the pity game. Like anyone else handicapped with other physical conditions, I like to have people understanding my situation and sympathizing the best they can. However, I don't want it to be a badge that I always wear on my shirt that limits people's expectations of me. Sometimes it's bad and I really can't compete at the level I'd like to, other times the painkillers do their job. My ideal scenario would be for people to have a lower level of expectation of me, and when the medicine works I can exceed those expectations. Honestly, I've wished many times that there was some kind of Virtual Reality machine that could physically put you into the other person's shoes and feel what they feel. Not only would that give other people a fair idea of what I'm feeling, but it would also give me peace of mind to know if other people would find it as frustrating as I would.

The biggest thing I hate about this condition is having that feeling that I'm using it as an excuse. When I was teaching/training in Karate, I was really limited to the amount of kicks I could pull off effectively and with power. You have no idea how embarrassing and shameful it is as a Karate instructor who has been training for as long as I have, to not be able to pull off basic kicks as effectively as I should be able to. At one point, I just had to ask the other instructors to teach that part of the class to avoid that embarrassing scene. Still my biggest fear is having others believe that I'm using the pain from this condition as an excuse for not wanting to put in the effort into some physical activity. Sometimes I can read it in people's eyes after I express my frustration, and there is literally nothing I can do at that point.

There have been times where I have internal struggles with myself. I think about those great athletes or individuals who have had conditions way worse than mine and have gone on to accomplish great physical feats (ie: Terry Fox). At these times I think about the pain that a certain movement causes me, and I wonder if my body is automatically reacting to that first sign of pain by stopping my movement or hindering my speed. Is there a way to get past that mental block or innate reaction your body has to pain? And if so, is it healthy to do that?

In the end, there's no real correct way of dealing with my condition. You take it as it is, and try your best not to be resentful about it. I hope to take it as an extra challenge to conquer, to do something great even though the cards are stacked against me in a way. My specialist also says that usually the condition burns out at the age of 40 and the symptoms disappear by then. But if you ask me, that's too many years down the line to wait.