I called this roughly 6 months after I was diagnosed. It’s only common sense. The human body can only take so much of your immune system attacking itself, and in short, it does one hell of a job destroying itself. Not to mention the drugs and the stress of the pain that you have to deal with. It all adds up (see below). I have been saying all along, my life span has been shortened. People have been telling me “oh no, I know people who take all kinds of drugs and are still alive in their 80′ or 90’s”. Well, I am not going to be one of the lottery winners that make it that long. Although this is some fucked up depressing news, it only confirms what I already knew.

Older medical literature suggests that people with rheumatoid arthritis may live 10-15 years less than their healthy counterparts. Life expectancy is influenced by many factors though, including family history, overall health, and lifestyle choices. The newest class of arthritis drugs, referred to as biologics, hopefully will offer a better prognosis.

# Rheumatoid Arthritis Shortens Life Expectancy
# The Correlation of Life Expectancy and Arthritis
# The Effect of Rheumatoid Arthritis on Mortality

Pulled from:
http://arthritis.about.com/od/rheumatoidarthritis/a/rheumatoid_fact.htm

-Ruger

I am hoping that its just the time of the year - end of January and the month of February. If you would have asked me yesterday, I would have answered that last night and yesterday was the worst I have felt all year (since last Jan & Feb) and even then I don’t think I was this bad. Its 1 AM right now and I am unable to sleep. So far, my right hand at the main knuckle joints are flaring up to the point that I can’t make a fist and or put any pressure on the palm of my hand to do simple tasks like using my hand to push myself up when standing or even sitting down. Next my jaw joint on the right side of my face is making it hard to even eat. I am trying to restrict my diet to soups and soft foods. The sharp pain from turning my head and or opening my mouth to yawn sends sharp stinging waves of pain up the side of my face into my head triggering migraine headaches. Every time I move, a joint pops/cracks somewhere on my body with needle sticking pain in the joint. My lower back, both hips, knees, and ankles are all flaring to the point that I can only take baby steps when walking and forget about standing up from a sitting position. I am on some very powerful narcotics, NSaids and corticosteroids. Not to mention the Prozac I take for depression and or what ever it helps for in dealing with this situation. I have been taking more then the recommended dosage and I still feel like this. I can only imagine what it would be like with out those medicines. Anyone with an autoimmune disease will know exactly what I am talking about. I can say one thing, if I didn’t have the mind altering medicines (Prozac, Welbutrin…) I would be in a world of hurt. No one can appreciate the way pain makes one feel from being in pain the majority of the day, every day. Pain makes you think and do some crazy things that would make a normal person think you are mentally ill. Maybe I am? If so, its only due to the pain and the failure (which is almost impossible) to manage it.

-Ruger

I have no idea how to even explain how the last week has been. Well, I have AS and or RA so I take a lot of drugs. One of them being OxyContin. I get a month at a time and since it is a controlled substance, I have to have a prescription each month. This time round, I had my wife call my doctor to get my OxyContin Script. I normally request the script 7 days in advance since I won’t have to be with out. Well I ran out and had to wait 4 days with out any OxyContin. Now, the last 4 days I have been detoxing. Detoxing from 40 Milligrams of OxyContin a day!

I finally got my scripts so the aching, painful movements are gone now.  The edge has been dulled to a almost nothing now.  This was one of the worst weeks this year for me.  The only thing I have a hard time with is knowing that something as small as a pill has such power of me.  But then again, I need this pill to live a half way normal life.  I am on a double edge sword.  At least I am still alive…

-Ruger

I missed work today. I woke up and could not move my legs and or my elbows. AS/RA had set in over night due to a few reasons I believe. I quit taking prednisone over the weekend due to high blood pressure and high/low blood sugars. Also, the the weather kicked in too. It started snowing and got very cold. Not sure which was more at fault but either way it hurts like hell and disables a lot of the shit that I can do. I am so sick of feeling like this that it pisses me off. Nothing I can do about it. I am sleeping a lot more for some reason too. Probably the reason why I can not sleep right not at almost 2AM.

-Ruger

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Now I have missed 3 days of work due to this sickness. My son now is very sick. We are hitting the docs office today to see if there anything that we can do to get better faster. This cough I have feels like I am coughing up a lung or two. This thing has hit me so hard that I am now going to stop smoking for good this time. I will set my quit date sometime next week depending on when I can get certain meds to help me. I think we have some type of FLU since both of us have nausea and can’t breath when we start coughing. I was running a fever for two days. I got the strong feeling that my co-workers did not want me at work yesterday due to I might get them sick (can’t blame them either) as I would not wish this feeling or sickness on my worst enemy (well, maybe my worst enemy).  Last night was really bad as I could not sleep and or breath due to coughing up my lungs.  I personally and honestly would rather be at work and be fine then feel like this.  This blows.

-Ruger