Smart Mouth

It is the night before my first Rituximab treatment. I am feeling a lot of things, apprehension and terror mostly. I have not learned from past experience, and have been doing internet research all day. Most websites I find describe horrible side effects, such a fear, a sensation of the room spinning and loosening of skin on my torso. I keep reminding myself that while a drug is in clinical trials they report EVERY side effect, even if they feel it was a pre-exsisting condition or if it is unrelated. Rationlly I get it, but the paranoid side of me is plotting ways I can get out of this.

At this point I don’t really have another treatment option. All avenues have been explored. The medicines either do not work for me, or some kind of side effect or reaction has made them unavaible to me.

I have had Rhuematoid Arthritis for almost 12 years now. Soon, I will have had this disease longer than I lived not having it. I think the most frustrating thing for me is that the general public doesn’t get it, they think that because I don’t look sick and I not missing an extremity, that I must be faking or I can’t be that sick.

I don’t know how people with chronic pain cannot be depressed. 90% of the time I think my attitude is pretty positive. But I get pretty tired. It is hard to live with the realization that my life will never be predictable, I never know what tomorrow will bring. I don’t even know what I will feel like a few hours from now.

Well, I will sign off for tonight and try to get some rest before the BIG day.