It happened one fine Sunday morning on January 2000. I boarded a bus to T.Nagar(the busiest place in Chennai). Forgot to got down and stop. I knew that this place will be crowded and made a costly miscalculation that this bus would crawl and I can get down while its moving. Alas! It was Sunday morning and the business has not yet started and the bus started moving at an incredible pace firing itself in the direction of the next bus-stop. Now, I have to get down or else my ticket would become invalid and more than that I’ll have to wait for the next bus to the opposite side at the next stop. My instinct instructed me to jump out of the bus and I did it subconsciously. I could run few yards but then lost my balance completely, tumbled and fell straight in the road; luckily the rear-tyre did not run over me. I felt a deep surge of pain on my chest but then it became alright in a couple of days.
I’m not sure whether this is the reason I acquired Rheumatoid arthritis. Researchers say that they’ve not yet identified any possible cause/syndrome that onsets this ailment.
Around 1 month after the above incident I started feeling pain on my shoulder joins, knees, elbows, chest and even knuckles. My thumb would swell to twice its size. I really got scared. You touch my thumb and I’ll scream in pain. Such was the condition. A local doctor in my town diagnosed it to be poly-arthritis and put me on ketoprofen tablets(Rhofenid-SR). It didn’t help. My graduate year-end exams were nearing and I was not able to hold even my pen set aside walking, cycling etc. I consulted a doctor in Chennai and he shocked me saying I had acquired Rheumatoid arthritis and he put me on Cortisones(available as Decdak in India) for a limited period. Wonder, my swollen joints came back to normal. My doc wisely discontinued this highly side-effective drug and started giving me Cox 2 Inhibitors(Celcox capsules). Internet gave me a lot of insight into this disease. I learnt that there is no cure for this ailment and the only way to subvert this is by keeping the joints from getting stiff and by keeping the joints in constant movement(but not overdoing it at the sametime).
Cox 2 is the enzyme that eats the synovial fluid which is present in the joints. These Celecoxib capsules are great innovation that they only target these Cox 2 enzymes from eating the synovial fluid. I was asked to reduce weight but slowly without doing any harsh exercise. I chose the diet option and reduced around 6-8 kilos. This helped a lot.
In a year’s time(yes, it takes a year to cross even the preliminary stages), I was able to do virtually what everybody could do but would hurt my joints if I overdo it. So, now after almost 3 years now, I’m quite alright though I have some early-morning stiffness sometimes. I jog around 40 minutes a day @ 9kmph and do some weight training too. I also take an ayurvedic medication Rumadap with Gold(prepared with Gold dust as one of its ingredient).
Believe in yourself. Keep saying that you’ll one day overcome this. Have a positive attitude. After all, your attitude matters the most than any medication. Keep a check on your weight. Do some mild non-strenuous exercises and bang on! You can thwart arthritis so very easily.
Happy healing.