What / which symptoms are most troubling to you now?

[MaddieHU]

How has your diagnosis impacted your day-to-day life?

[hawker955]

Aching hands are a nuisance. The main effect is the susceptibility to infections like colds etc after going out to busy places. That messes up my sporting-ambitions in a major way!

[Bothamsall]

Hands and fingers and on Monday had a flare up in left elbow swollen and couldn’t move it without extreme pain

[Deniseelk]

My wrist is destroyed so I have limited movement and strength. I have to use other body parts to do jobs. It slows me down as I can’t use both hands to carry ( ie one plate at a time, etc). Often can’t open bottles, packets etc so have to rely on others. Impacts daily.

[popsmith1874]

My hands feet and elbows are bad at the moment, hands are swollen and sore especially on the nuckles and fingers are throbbing, hands are like boxing gloves

[Caza]

Daily pain & stiffness in my hands & feet. Not being able to wear nice boots & shoes. The dread I feel when going to weddings parties days out etc...knowing I will struggle. Undoing bottle tops jars & chopping up veg-everyday tasks. Hearing me constantly saying to myself ‘I feel sooow tired’ etc......

[Alexplode]

Pain in fingers, wrist, elbow, shoulders and also tendon pain in legs. However I find the extreme fatigue hard to deal with.

[Patient0]

Joint pain and unpredictable fatigue. Makes planning ahead difficult!

[Kb5417]

Up until recently I was “cured” (I wish) !!!! Since January I’ve been flaring in various joints including feet, knees, hands, hips, back, ribs, shoulders, tmj, throat, neck so pretty much everywhere. It makes me so miserable, frustrated, tired, grouchy but I smile and get on with it because I have to. It’s the randomness of ra roulette that gets you down cause you don’t know where is going to ache next but at least it’s not everywhere at once !!!! The thought of the potential cocktail of drugs I’m trying to avoid taking plays heavily on my mind at the moment, but I know that I have to have a quality of life and be able to work for as long as possible to be happy. I just wish that there was one medication that treated this disease instead of the constant trial and fail approach.

[GoatGirl56]

Always some level pain in shoulders and neck...worry about reprisal of Frozen Shoulder. Mornings are miserable. Pain in any/all shoulders, hips, fingers, knees, ankles. But once I'm up and have my green tea with Kratom, I can move. The more I work/move, the looser things get. Other than that, I have frequent red patches of skin on my face and my hair is dismal - blame the MTRX for that.

[Graceusha1]

Hi Maddie, thanks for asking the question. This summer I'm living with my sister who is dealing with a deadly serious cancer. I hope I have been of help to her and her family living in this kind of climate where I am at this present time it has been very rainy. I think this is influenced my arthritis. This is a new kind of life for me having arthritis or I believe it is RA. I have always been relatively healthy and well. And I guess I still am. I pretty much know how to manage my symptoms although LOL they do get ahead of me sometimes. The mornings of course are the very worst and I have to ease into the day one thing that is very different for me is being fatigued. As an over 65 person I do expect to be fatigued at times but this is something different. I am trying to rest as I know that is very helpful. I guess I could say that I feel grateful that this is something that I can manage and hopefully we'll live for a long time, as I've put it in perspective however there are times when I do feel kind of annoyed and discouraged when I don't feel well. Thank you for letting me vent on this. Have a wonderful day, Gracie