In Good Health // Living with Rheumatoid Arthritis

When I was eighteen, life felt like a story just beginning.

I had big plans, bigger than my small town could ever hold, and I was ready to chase them all.

But on Eid 2012, I woke up with legs that hurt.. It hurt so bad that I couldn’t walk. I never imagined I'd be grounded by something invisible.

At that age, pain was a temporary thing, the kind that came after a long hike, a night of dancing, or a twisted ankle from something stupid and forgettable.

 Pain was a visitor, not a roommate.

So when my knees started swelling for no reason, and my hands refused to close into fists, I shrugged it off.

Maybe I had overexerted myself. Maybe it will pass.

One morning, I swung my legs out of bed and couldn’t stand. My body, stubbornly young a few months before, had betrayed me overnight.

I needed help just to walk to the bathroom. I leaned against walls, furniture, anything steady enough to keep me upright.

And then I ended up in a hospital unaware of the fact that these visits will never stop.

// Hospitals visits and the anxiety

The doctors tried to figure me out. Some looked at me with sympathy. Others, with disbelief.

One doctor (I still remember his glasses slipping down his nose) told me, "It’s probably just stress. You’re too young for something serious."

(See you never, Doc)

Another doctor handed me a note that was heavy: Rheumatoid Arthritis.

Globally, about 70% of individuals living with RA are women .

 In developed countries, RA affects approximately 0.5–1% of adults, with women being affected two to three times more frequently than men.

And surprisingly, these numbers told me ‘I am not alone.

I was put on DMARDs  and it gave me hope. And somehow, I packed up for my first year of college.

I thought maybe if I pushed hard enough, pretended hard enough, I could still have the life I dreamed of. But pain didn't care about my dreams.

It curled around my ribs during lectures, stabbed behind my eyes during exams, pressed into  my hands until even lifting a pen felt like climbing a mountain.

After a few months,I gave up and moved back home. That pain of folding your dreams never left me even today.

// Well, it’s also in our heads

The thing no one tells you about living with arthritis is that it’s never just about joints.

It’s about waking up every day and trying to calculate how much you can do with the limited energy you have. It’s about flares that come without warning, like your own body throwing a tantrum you can't predict or stop.

When you first start seeing doctors for joint pain, they ask you the same question over and over again: "Can you rate your pain on a scale from one to ten?"

 I always hesitate.How do you measure something that is everything?

Ten meant screaming. Ten meant shattering. Eight felt like drowning quietly, just enough to be handed over some pain killers. But isn’t it what pain is? A silent ache?

I remember one night vividly. My knees had swollen so much that even the weight of a bedsheet felt like a hammer pressing down on them. I shuffled to the living room on crutches because I couldn’t bear the idea of calling my parents again for help.

 I sat there, half-hunched, watching the clock tick into some unspeakable hour, waiting for the pain to crest and fall.

It didn’t. And I landed in the ER AGAIN!

And the question! I stared at her, trying to find a number small enough not to sound dramatic, but large enough to be honest.

Finally, I held up eight fingers.

She nodded, scribbled something down. Later, after they’d pushed something into my veins that made everything distant and fuzzy, she came back and tucked the blanket tighter around me.

"You know," she said softly, "people who can still joke, still smile through an eight? They’re the toughest ones."

But that wasn’t the whole truth.

I didn’t call it an eight because I was brave. I called it an eight because I was saving my ten.

Ten was for the days when the infection came back so hard I couldn’t keep food down, and my body wasted away before my eyes.Ten was for the days when they pricked every vein until my arms and legs were blue and purple maps of defeat. Ten was when the hospital mirrors showed a girl half her size, with ghost eyes, who didn't recognize herself anymore.

Ten was the day I sat on the edge of my bed after another flare, hands too deformed to tie my own shoelaces, thinking

 "If this is my life forever, how am I supposed to keep doing it?"

But even tens don’t drown you all at once.

 Some days you float face-up, stunned. Some days you manage a kick toward the surface. Some days you just let the water take you for a while because it’s easier than fighting.

People think arthritis is just sore joints.They don’t see the moments you can’t even lift a coffee cup, or when your own hands curl away from you like strangers.

Even opening jars, tying shoelaces — things I had never thought twice about — turned into long, painful battles.

// Oh, Fatigue– my old friend

You cannot talk about arthritis without talking about fatigue. A tiredness so deep it feels stitched into your bones. Not just tired from staying up late or running too far — tired from breathing, tired from standing, tired from existing.

Somedays, I go back to thinking about the days when I could do things because I want to.. That memory no longer exists even though I tried to hold onto it for so long.

Someday, taking a shower is the core.

Someday, you outdo yourself.

Every time you party, you know the claws are coming back the next day.

15 years since the first flare, It never gets better.

// There is a light at the end of the tunnel

But in the middle of it all, I learned things I never would have otherwise. And I’d love to share those with you:

Lesson #1 I learned that health isn’t just about medicine. It’s about nutrition, about understanding what your body loves and hates.

 Lesson #2 Know your triggers ( food, stress, weather changes) and adapt before they knock you out.

Lesson #3 Pay attention to the smallest signs — a little swelling, a shift in my energy — treating them like early warning signals. Self-awareness becomes your survival tool.

// Suhana Siddika