With the
release of the book “RA Unmasked” by Kelly Young ( http://bit.ly/RAunmasked), this has been a red-letter week for a
group of people who have been the objects of neglect and misunderstanding. Sufferers of “RA- Rheumatoid Arthritis” have
been cast as having simply the same wear and tear arthritis Aunt Tilly had and
our constant illness and our desperate attempts to make somebody, anybody to understand, are looked on as
hypochondriasis. We are sick in multiple
ways…surely this is not just arthritis but a much more insidious demon,
debilitating and causing us harm and agonizing pain.
Because I’ve
followed Kelly Young’s blog “RA Warrior” for years, I understood that RA (which
now we hope will be changed to “RD, Rheumatoid Disease”) is a systemic, serious,
debilitating and often fatal disease… But knowing that didn’t make that as real
to me as it was to read one after another description of “Extra Articular” (conditions
which involve symptoms and destruction far in excess of “mere” arthritis) –and
to say as I read chapter after chapter: “I have that. I have that and that one too.” It was
sobering to read that someone sporting four other such conditions/diseases is
at a great risk of not surviving a full-length life…and I had something like 10
of these extra-articulars. Suddenly, all
the confusion of my life and extensive medical history was congealed into one
morass of destruction due to RD…not some kind of random, wacky curse that God
had arranged for me; not a product of my imagination; not hypochondriasis. I have a disease. And it is the one that killed my mom just a
year ago.
This has
become personal. This book has sobered
me and made me realize this is no battle for the faint of heart. I am at the point where I do not want to see
yet another doctor. I already have many
specialists and have had numerous, extensive surgeries. I need a cure. I need a miracle, and it is only by
correcting popular misconception—which exist even among highly trained medical
professionals—that we will begin to see the research necessary to someday come
to the place where there are viable, effective treatments.
Kelly Young
has made it personal as well. She is
raising 5 children despite great suffering as a result of RD…she has
researched, spent endless hours at her computer, talked to thousands of people
and she is making a difference. Kelly
will, when God calls her to Heaven (hopefully at a ripe old age), have
positively affected the lives of millions of people. I have purchased several of her book, one of
which will go into the hands of my rheumatologist. Thank you, Kelly for validating the things we
suspected to be true and for shining a light onto ways that we can make a
difference.
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