Rheumatoid arthritis

Hi everyone! One of my goals is to make daily self-care posts, including the forums here. I check in with the chronic pain forum pretty regularly, and it seems kind of sleepy. Unless I'm not looking in the right places :-).

So rheumatoid arthritis has been the condition that I've been dealing with for 2 or 3 years now. Long enough that I forgot my diagnosis date! I'm pretty achy, although the pain's pretty well managed by medication and rest. The fatigue, however, can still be pretty bad. I also deal with depression, so sometimes it can be hard to unwind the threads between depression and pain.

I work part-time, which people don't really seem to understand. And sometimes I wish I could do more, but the fact is that 24 hours a week really wipes me out. And I'm lucky that I can make enough money to live on part time. Plus it gives me extra time in the morning for yoga and meditation, extra time with my dog and cats. So at this point I'm not really sure I would want to go back to full-time.

RA is a much different reality to live with than I imagined. But in some ways what I imagined is worse, like my joints don't really get swollen because I'm in early stages. But I never imagined that arthritis could make you so tired, like you're constantly fighting off the flu. So that can be difficult to manage.