The Girl With Arthritis

If you know me, you know that I'm always cold. I've always wondered if this was the arthritis or if it  means I have a cold heart. Regardless, you tend to see me bundled up at all times. Sometimes I won't even take my coat off when I get  home at night. The cold instantly makes my body stiffer and more painful: if I'm out shopping, I'll just walking around looking so I don't have to move too much. And let's not even  go into how cold my hands are at all times (eve in the summer). But recently, I've had the oddest thing happen to me: My fingernails are going blue. The first time this happened I text my mum a picture. She instantly became frightened and called my rheumatologist. He wasn't in, but the nurse wrote it down in my charts. I see him next week anyway.  I've been taking pictures of it to show my doctor as well. Everyone in my family who has been told is obviously a little startled and then goes on to suggest it's just the cold. Obv...

My hips hurt a lot today. My back hurts a lot today. My knees hurt a lot today. But the worse part is, my hands hurt a lot today. And I don't have arthritis of my hand. No, this isn't random pain. Today I was trying to finish a coloured pencil illustration. Rather than taking my time and using nice layers that would smooth over, I rushed (I didn't have much time to complete it) and grinded my coloured pencils into the paper. In just a few minutes (if not less), my hand hurt terribly. It hurt to touch something, hold something, move my hand, or even just keeping it still. It was bad and still is kind of bad. I always felt 'out of the loop' with adults and children with arthritis because most of those I've met have hand pain. I now symapthasis with them. Not completely, I admit not even half complete, but I can now understand that hand pain is the worse pain. You don't realise how much you need your hands until they hurt too much to use. I can't even...

So, as you may know I take Enbrel twice a week. Yes, I do inject it myself, typically in my stomach. And I've perfected my needle poke ability over the past few months. I learnt very quickly to run my hands under warm water for a few minutes after washing them before I get started. Not only is this good hygiene, but so I won't go 'Ah!' when I touch my stomach, as has happened when I have cold hands. But it's pretty funny to watch my reaction to touching my stomach with cold hands. :)

Today I went to school. Shocker, isn't it? Anyway, I was doing a drawing with charcoal pencils so naturally my hands were filthy and I was trying to clean them with hand sanitizer and tissues. Didn't work well but they did the job but as I was cleaning my hands I noticed something: Fingers are weird. Or at least mine are. For one, they don't even stretch out all the way. Two, the joints are all weird with a little fluid in them (which means they are squishy and but not exactly swollen and red). And three, why on Earth do we have little moving attena like things sticking out of our arms?! Anyway, as if noticing my hands look like something out of a 1950's horror movie isn't bad enough but I noticed that I disturb (as in annoy) this kid in my class. Honestly, I see why too. He usually sits behind me or near the clock. Anyone who is in class with me can tell you I watch the clock all the time. He probably caught me too many times and thinks I'm staring at him all...