Rheumatoid Arthritis Good Days Are As Rare As Leap Years!

As you may have realized already, this was a leap year! Time to jump for joy! (Spoiler alert: If you don’t like leaping puns and word play, better click off this article now!)

Yes, it’s one of those special years that bless us with an extra day in that shortest (but certainly not the least) month, February. In fact, I’m writing this on the 29th day, just to give it that extra oomph. But why am I talking about leap year on a rheumatoid arthritis (RA) site?

Because I’m having a really good day, and I realized — it's fitting that it’s happening on February 29th, because once every 4 years is about how often we get unmitigated good days when you live with something like RA and other chronic illnesses.

Achieving little goals is everything

Why am I having a good day? Did I spring out of bed? (Told you.) No, not really. I don’t think I’ll ever spring much anywhere again, but I’m not really hurting. I have enough energy to do pretty much whatever I need to, and I was able to walk the dog down to the end of the block and back!

Now, that may not sound like a lot to someone who hasn’t lived with rheumatoid arthritis for decades, but for those of us who have put up with this awful illness for years, we know that those little goals are everything. If I can do 1 or maybe 2 of those things in a day, it counts as a really great day! I never would expect a trifecta of a day, but every once in a while the stars align and we get to hop up and down on 1 foot or whatever it is that most "normal" people do on leap year day.

Stress can lead to RA flare-ups

It’s difficult for anyone who doesn’t live with chronic illness to understand how not having good days but once in a very long while can take a toll on a person physically but, really, mentally. The day-in, day-out unpredictability of rheumatoid arthritis and other chronic illnesses is stressful, to say the least, and stress happens to be one of the most common triggers for rheumatoid arthritis flare-ups. Then, when you are flaring up, you get even more stressed and feel guilty that you are missing out on the things you need to do, and around and around it goes, one issue leapfrogging another (sick of puns yet?).

Dealing with the threat of comorbidities

Living with the constant fear of fatigue and flare-ups is just one aspect of the mental game, though. There is also something else that happens with greater frequency the longer you live with rheumatoid arthritis, and that’s the chance of developing co-morbidities.

It’s pretty much the exact opposite of a loyal customer reward program – in this system, the longer you have the illness, the higher the chance you will develop a serious secondary condition. For me, there’s been heart attacks, high blood pressure, pneumonia, and then the big one saved for last (or most recent) – cancer, and all are related to my rheumatoid arthritis in one way or another.

You may think it’s just the same as a flare, but flares aren’t generally life-threatening, and almost all of those conditions can be — or, well, they were, period. My life almost ended — twice, actually — due to the comorbidities my illness produced. I just couldn’t hurdle the consequences (ehh, weak, I know, but you try coming up with this many synonyms for "leap").

Good days are worthy of celebration

As you can see, when you have a good day, it’s something to remember. Just like a leap year, it happens so infrequently that it sticks out and is worthy of celebration.

So, what am I going to do with this wonderful gift of a day that I have been given? Run a marathon? Have a party? Find a quarter horse and teach it dressage? No, I’ll probably just do what I always do — do some work, do some writing, and then play a few games after dinner. But I promise I will enjoy it that much more!

We do our best to get through each day

That's the thing about living with the unpredictability of RA — you don’t get to choose when you are going to have a very good day. It just happens, and if you’ve planned to do nothing on that day, like usual, then you have a very good day doing nothing.

If we could know which days were going to be winners in advance, that would change the whole RA game, as it were, but we can’t. We just do our best to get through the day in whatever condition we drudge out of bed in, and once every 4 years or so, we might just "leap" out instead. Talk soon.