This is in response to PMRpro 's request to describe how we changed our lives after diagnosis. My particular experience is kind of boring so only providing it because we can't all reinvent ourselves brilliantly! Perhaps this account should more accurately be described as, "How I failed to reinvent myself".
In retrospect I'd obviously had PMR symptoms for over a year before a new doctor diagnosed it in 2015. By then I was 68 and had about six months earlier retired from my part time job in a public library. Because the workplace was changing and not nearly as fun as it had been I'd decided to go ahead with retirement although I knew too well it would plunge me right back into the lonely space I'd been in twenty years earlier before starting that job. Possibly if work had remained the same I might have lasted longer (changes were making it stressful) and once I was on pred I might well have worked for a few more years.
Apart from dealing with having a chronic illness which did take up some time as I was threatened with developing osteoporosis and doing everything possible avoid having to take medication for that, I also started trying out various volunteer positions. Most of those didn't pan out. For example I got trained as a reading companion for the blind, but the woman I was put in touch with made it plain, over the phone, that she had a friend who came in to read with her but she was very sorry to have lost the young woman who used to come in from CNIB to help her with household chores. Needless to say, in my late 60s my altruism didn't extend to becoming a blind stranger's handmaiden. Eventually I spent a few hours each week keeping a chair warm at the local museum, and also volunteered a few hours a month at a couple of art galleries. I also carried on taking workshops and classes, usually art-related, as I had done throughout my adult life. All of these things were started before diagnosis, so not much changed except easing of pain once I finally got prescribed pred.
Then about four years into the post-diagnosis PMR journey I moved from a house into a multi-unit building. We'd lived there just about a year, I was beginning to feel more at home and enjoyed living downtown although missing the house, when the pandemic struck. My carefully curated "something to do outside the home every weekday" suddenly vanished.
Now years have been spent relying more on Zoom and when in public indoor spaces remaining masked. Try to meet friends outdoors when possible but the weather the past year has been awfully unreliable and usually unpleasant. Have just started volunteering in an art gallery again as I now have a personal HEPA air purifier. I'd done it a bit after lockdown ended, but stopped as soon as the mask mandate was dropped just in time for the Omicron variant to start killing off previously comparatively safe Nova Scotians.
I should have linked this to PMRpro's post:
Can I have PMR with normal CRP
Have I re-invented myself since PMR?
PMR Relapse after operation?
PMR DIAGNOSIS
PMR symptoms. Seronegative RA diagnosis.
