Dear Rheumatoid Arthritis
Dear Rheumatoid Arthritis,
It’s time I say thank you for coming into my life 12 years ago and showing me how to be a stronger human! You have pushed me so hard to dream big and overcome what felt like the impossible. Now that you are gone I want to take a moment to thank you for all of the experiences and opportunities you have given me. The people I have met and the strength to push forward and almost fight to live have been miraculous. Now I realize how hard it was to function and I do not ever want to live like that again and so I welcome a calmer, more stable, new beginning.
Some profound memories were sitting in a chair unable to walk at my cooking school while making 60 Thanksgiving pies and rolling the dough out with my forearms because both my wrists are fused and used to cause so much pain. How about wheeling all over the cold streets of Manhattan and Montreal in January and February with my sweet husband pushing me through snow and freezing winds. His hands so cold we stopped to buy gloves and then laughed our way to the next fun stop. I have been wanting to thank you for not acting up on my wedding day! It was so nice to wear heals and walk down the aisle pain-free. Two or more times I have had to cancel cooking classes that I had scheduled and wow does that feel shitty! Mostly I remember how hard I had to fight to live my daily norms. Thank you for introducing me to a list of wonderful healers from the Yucatan, NYC, Oregon, and Vermont. Let’s also give a shout out to Functional Medicine while we are at it!
Now 53 days not walking because of you I sit here and feel that it is my husband who deserves the thank you. For a long time he has been carrying me up and down stairs, loading the bulky wheelchair into the car, and picking up extra household chores. He’s the hero!
Oh the doors you have opened. My surgeon Dr. John Kennedy in NYC was a dream come true and had the honor to put an end to the last piece of our relationship.
As I sat in my hospital gown January 2019 in the brand new Langone orthopedic center waiting to go into the OR, Dr. Kennedy was marking my foot with a black pen, I warned him of the monster you were and to be careful. Then it was time, and shocking the OR nurse said I was going to walk into the OR about 50 feet away. Walk? I had not been walking for sometime and she wants me to what? I’m in a hospital loaded with wheelchairs. I thought to myself, okay, this is how my new beginning and my old life of pain are going to meet for one second. Then I climbed up on the operating table and they started to do my nerve block and I kept telling the anesthesiologist as tears fell down my face how this is my new beginning not just some injury. This is it! The end of my old friend RA.
My first words in the recovery room were with Dr. Kennedy as I was waking up after my 5 hour mid-foot rebuild with over $180,000 of French titanium as my new internal secret bling. I asked him if the monster had gotten him? He happily said we killed it! Then him and I (in what felt like slow-mode) had a high-five that I will never ever forget!
Now the feeling in my foot is slowly coming back 1 cm at a time. Soon I will feel my foot as a whole complete new foot again and this time it will be pain-free. Amen! Thank you RA for introducing me to Zach Bush for he is teaching me how to heal these deep wounds you caused. I have also learned from Zach how not to go back to old ways and to zoom out and think big and bigger.
Now when I move onto my next phase of life I will not have you, Rheumatoid Arthritis, by side. I am going it alone now. I appreciate all that we have gone through. Now it’s time I help others that are experiencing your evil ways with the goal of showing them the not so easy path to a new beginning.