Rheumatoid Flare:1, Trudy:0

11 Weeks and counting. My flare was a little better the past few days while I was in Amsterdam. I wonder if the sea level air pressure or moist climate has anything to do with it? Or maybe my meds were finally kicking in? Or maybe the stress was less?

I've only known about this disease inside me for about 18 months. And I have to confess, I don't think I've really got a handle on it yet.

I read a lot about it, and I see that people who manage to live with it with most vitality are the ones who follow a healthy lifestyle. Eat well, exercise well, and manage stress well.  Eating well means, for me I think, being sugar free and dairy free mostly. I notice that if I take in a lot of dairy and sugar together, I wake up the following day with swollen hands and feet - something in this autoimmune body of mine there is a sad resistance to all things delicious!

But now I'm flagging. I have huge projects to deliver, and high level Tenders to produce. I sit in front of my laptop and try to produce the output I need. But nothing happens. My brain doesn't engage. I end up troubleshooting all the other little tasks around me that need doing, and allow myself to avoid the big painful one.

I have always had a bit of a tendency to procrastinate, but this is bigger than that. Rheumatoid Arthritis has Brain Fog as a symptom. Hashimotos has Brain Fog as a symptom. The chemo I take has chemo brain as a side effect. I suppose I have to expect that I'll have at least one of those afflictions sending me it's symptom. I have no idea which one. But here I sit anyway. Stuck. Afraid. Nervous. Stressing. Not sleeping. Feeling the building tension that seems to be making my Rheumatoid worse again now I'm back in South Africa.

Every morning now I'm waking up with hands frozen. They feel more like paws...fingers stuck on 'curl' until I have a warm shower and take my Anti Inflammatories! It is making me feel depressed and despondent. When I go to the toilet first thing in the morning, I am unable to hold the toilet paper to wipe myself clean. It seems like a simple thing, but it feels quite devastating actually. That's a basic thing I take completely for granted and suddenly I can't do that in the morning. I'm working hard to keep this desease at bay, and yet it seems to continue marching at me, ignoring my attempts at mitigation.

Once I've delivered my Tender at the end of the month, I think I'll have to take a few days off to try and destress myself. I'm thinking that the building tension is impacting the flare I'm having and making things worse. I think that actually writing my tender may also help me feel better - I must apply myself more to that.

I feel like even writing this peice is coming to me heavily. The ideas aren't flowing the way they usually do. The thoughts and words feel stilted and stuck, like me.

And still I pine for Red. We have intermittent spurts of trying to meet up. And then the efforts die down again and nothing happens. I'm pretending to myself that I'm not waiting for him. And yet I wait and wait and wait. It's agony, this waiting. I don't want to be here, doing that. I want to have someone who would hold me at this time, offer to sit next to me on the weekend, and give me moral support while I write my way through this mountain of a tender. I want Red to be that person.

But he won't. I do know this at some deep level.

It's still just me. Fucking lonely me.