These past several months have been an exercise in survival.  I am feeling better than I have in months, but I still have a way to go before I am at a place where rheumatoid arthritis is not in every other thought.  I have come to a place of survival.

All this down time has made me wonder how many of us are living with this disease and how many of us are in survival mode?

What is survival mode? For me it is getting through another day.  Surviving the day with rheumatoid arthritis.  Not exactly my idea of fun, but I am getting by. I wonder what survival means to everyone else with this disease.  While survival is better than giving up it is not where I want to be.

I am an optimist so I believe that this is just a temporary setback on my journey to living well with RA.  The idea that this survival mode is a permanent situation is not something that I am willing to entertain ever.  I have too much fight left in me to settle for half way.

I am grateful to be out of bed. Two months ago I was flat on my back all day long.  I am grateful that I am able to tackle small tasks on a daily basis so that I feel that I have accomplished something.  But this is not where I want to be.  I know that I have a ways to go and that this will probably take longer that I originally anticipated, but I am in this for the long haul and I am determined to find a new way to live with this disease without adding toxic chemicals to my body.

Here is what I have been doing so far and it seems to be having an impact on my overall wellness.

• I am monitoring my diet and have eliminated dairy from my diet. I have found out the hard way that if I do ingest something that has dairy in it I will swell. I have been adding and subtracting different foods from my diet to see what is having an impact on inflammation. So far dairy has had the biggest impact.
• I have been taking Flaxseed Oil (I can’t do fish oil supplements) and Vitamin D daily.
• I have found that mediation helps me sleep better and makes mornings a little more manageable.
• I am starting to be able to exercise ( I am using this term loosely because the rate of speed that I walk would hardly be called exercise, but it is movement and more than my body has seen in months.)
• I am careful about what I eat and have lost over 25 pounds since January 1, 2010.
• I spend time every day visualizing what it looks like to be free of stiffness and pain.

So far I am improving and I hope to be back to my old self soon.

In all honesty I have felt this bad on methotrexate.  I have had the same levels of pain, inflammation, and stiffness while on mtx so I have been pleasantly surprised at my progress and so far happy with my decision to look for an alternative solution to mtx.  It has made me wonder on more than one occasion how well the mtx was really working for me.

So for me, tomorrow is a new day with new hope for less pain and inflammation and life mode not just survival mode.