The Girl With Arthritis

I have come to a conclusion: Pain scales and charts are biased against arthritis. And I have a wonderful argument of why. First of all, it's easy to rate a single pain at its current condition. But when you're asking me of my general condition, most likely you won't get a right answer. You see, if some joints are a 3, two are 5 and my back is at a 9, when averaged out my overall pain is less than 5. However, my back is keeping me from living life. So... How does that work? Especially when your doctor says "Yes, your back is a nine but overall..." But all you can feel is your back? With arthritis there are no zero/no pain days. There are 8/hurts a lot days, 6/hurts even more days, 4/hurts a little more and the occasional 2/hurts a little days when I'm lucky. But by no means are there zero/ no hurt days. I kind of feel cheated that my painful day is only a 8 but it won't be taken seriously. Another person with an 8 will be cared for (and rightly so), but...

I'm actually writing this as I try and begin an art project (just a painting of a kitten), so please bare with me. I think it's funny how people have to take medicine to care for the side effects of the medicines that care for the symptoms of a disease. I remember taking one NSAID that caused me headaches, severe light headedness, fatigue, muscle ache and later extreme nausea. The light head feeling was so bad that I would tip my head upside down and cover it with a pillow just to feel like I actually had blood in my head. I ended up staying home from school for about a week, with that weekend being filled with- to put it bluntly- vomit. I think the worse part about this all, was the doctor kept telling me to push on. I actually ended up in way more pain from the medicine than I ever have from the disease. My mum, being the smart woman she is, took me off of it after I couldn't move. And me, being as stubborn as ever, eventually fired that doctor after two years of him ig...

If you've ever been asked 'What's your pain on a scale of one to ten,' you know what I'm talking about. I get this question quite regularly regarding arthritis, and every single time I stop and really think. You see, I have quite a hard time picking a number. Since ten is supposed to be the worse pain you've ever felt, I try and stay away from 8, 9, 10 and most especially 11. I'm very much used to my pain, though it's still pain none the less. But just so my doctor get's the point, I stay away from anything under 5. So far I've elimated seventy per cent of the scale. This is where it gets tricky. I almost always put my monthly pain in 7. Seven is 'A lot of pain, but I'm still making it day after day.' Also so they  don't think I'm faking or something. But 7 in and of itself is quite boring. I like to spice things up. On a bad month, I'll call it a 7.8. On a good, it will just be a 7 or maybe even a 6.5. But mostly, i...