An Effort To Understand

Today I atended the graduation party of a boy who is the step-son of my bff Katie and son of one of Scott's bfs Ben. Well, being gluten-free and dairy-free does have it's challenges when you're out in public so before I put anything on my plate I had to go thru my rounds of questions. "Is there cheese in the meatballs?" "Is there butter on the chicken wings?" etc. Staying away from gluten was easy. Just avoid the bread and pastas. I got a few raised eyebrows and Katie helped out by asking also. She explained that I couldn't eat any dairy.

An aquaintance of mine that I met thru Katie was also there. The dairy questions didn't go unnoticed by her. She asked me if I was lactose intollerent and I said no but didn't elaborate. We got to talking about her fiance's knees and all the pain he has been having with them. (Her fiance is the brother of Ben.) I asked her if he maybe has OA. She asked me what OA is so I told her it was ostheo-arthritis. I gave her the name of my orthopedic surgeon and we continued to talk.

After about 10 minutes, my RA came up, as I explained to her why I wasn't eating dairy or gluten. She asked mw what it was so I just simply said that it's an auto-immune disease. She then asked someting that most people didn't ever ask after I would say "RA is an auto-immune disease." She said. "What does that mean exactly?" She was searching for answers. I was floored.

We spent the next 20 minutes or som talking about RA. Well, I talked and she listened. She really took a genuine interest in it. She asked about treatments and I explained the difference between NSAIDs, DMARDs, and Biologics. I told her what led to my diagnosis. I told her about my treatment now.

I can't tell you how refeshing it was to have someone who I really don't know that well to actually be geniunly curious. There were no comments about how "It sucks to get old." or "Have you tried Aleve because that helps my arthritis." or any other silly comments I've gotten.

So my fellow RAers, there is hope out there! There are people who don't know this disease from Adam that are willing to learn about it! WOOT! Now if we can only get more on board!