Reading and Writing about Rheumatoid Arthritis

Why is it important to read and write about rheumatoid arthritis (RA)? As a writer and fellow experiencer of RA (a neologism I just made!), reading and writing about my disease/illness/disability — whatever you want to call it — has helped me arrive at a better understanding of myself and how I interact with my body that has RA.

But: I'm ready to move beyond talking about just me and what RA means to me and to engage in conversations about how my RA exists outside of myself — mostly in interacting with others. What would this look like? What does this mean? And how does this reconfigure our understanding of disability and RA?

My thinking is that reading and writing help translate my RA experience into a more digestible and understandable medium — that’s at least my hope, anyway.

The body is made up of many elements

I'm a writer. I'm getting my Master of Arts in Literature, Media, and Culture, so language and writing are part of my everyday life. But so is RA, so I see the 2 as fundamentally intersected and together. And clearly, there is a bit of a metatextual element here in writing this article because I'm employing those mediums and craft in telling my story.

There's a lot of academic discourse about how the body is a discursive site — it's made up of and constructed by language, discourse, other people, yourself, your thoughts, societal formations, and more. This makes the body — in its construction — pliable and porous and open to change.

Sounds a little complex and vague, for sure. But, what we can really glean from this understanding of the body is this: in this pliability, the body becomes a site where we can really understand each other and see what it looks like to experience illness. It invites readers into this reading and encourages all to take part in learning.

A better understanding of chronic illness

What sort of implications does this have for RA? It means that our notions of disability and of a "disabled" body are fundamentally constructed by discourse, which means we can change the narrative, the stigma that can come with having a chronic illness.

If we only considered the body in terms of a medical model of disability, we lose a critical aspect of the lived experiences of individuals who have disabilities and chronic illnesses, for we would only be speaking about the body, about rheumatoid arthritis in terms of the physical body.

This is where writing and reading and talking come into play because it's through these that we realize a more thorough and complete understanding of the entire picture of having a chronic illness.

The impact of reading and writing about RA

What I'm trying to say is that reading and writing about rheumatoid arthritis is not just for 1 person. It’s not just me — I’m not writing these articles or moderating just for me; it's for our entire community. It's for sharing and making ourselves and our experiences known.

The more that we can read and write about having a chronic illness, the more that we can understand the nuances and complexities that come with RA.