Hi Stuart,,,,  I found out a long time ago that people can be their own
worst enemy about a great many things in this life.   You will find that a
great many people in this newsgroup are here to share what has taken place
in their life with arthritis and with the things that we all live with in
our daily life.    38 to 45 was my family doctors fault.   He put me on
Naprosyn (500mg prescription) and I took that up to the max amount per day
to keep working and living with the pain of RA.   At 45, he finally threw up
his hands and sent me to a RD who on the first appointment put me on gold
shots and a strong steroid for RA.   That was 3 RDs ago and back then we did
not have the choices we have today.   Methx was just coming into favor as a
prescription with RDs willing to try it on their patents.  My first RD was
not one of them.  My 2d RD was.   The first RD retired and my insurance
through my company stopped paying for gold shots which caused my 2d RD to
put me on Methx and changed my steroid to prednisone along with a whole
string of NSAIDs trying to find one that worked.
          It took a few years for me to realize that a lot of people wasted
quite a few joints on the latest rub on not to mention all the money wasted
trying to find an easy way to live with RA.   There is no easy way,,,, cheap
way,,,, and the disease marches on while we play games.   One day, our
arteries and veins no longer take some of the procedures a person can do to
fight RA and we start to loose the battle to be sort of normal as we live
with RA.   spelling- Prosorba filtering of the blood comes to mind.
Kitty,,, KJ and others.
       As far as myself,  I have come to realize how lucky I am with my
disease and how well each of my DMARDs has worked to battle what RA does to
a person because I have been able to change when one of them stops working
for me and I have an RD that is willing to change and sees the need.   I
have been pretty close to the bottom at one time as far as attitude and
depression while trying to get my four kids raised and on their own and
living with pain with each step or each grasp or each set of stairs that
seemed to have no top.   I also came to realize that other people fight the
same battles, live with the same kind of pains and have to live with the
fact that what they have is not going to let them do many things in life.
The secret to it all is to find the things you can do and do them well while
helping others to see how they can apply this to their life.    The rewards
for this effort are far more than what some people do that can not stand the
truth or being told the truth such as the fear of DMARDs or salesmen trying
to make a buck off of people in pain.   As you have noticed,  we have quite
a few good people in this newsgroup that do what they can to help people
live with Arth....and do a much better job of doing what is called "Support"
in their own way.   Many times I am going to tell you what I think or what I
have lived with even if you do not want to listen and sometimes that is not
productive.  So it goes.

Harv

Hi Charlene, so your a female version of Niles then! (Frasier).  I already
have a nice long list and i am adding to it all the time.  I will let you
know how I get on, thanks for the concern.
Stuart

Stuart,
Ha!!!! A female version of Niles??? LOL!!!
I certainly hope that I at least look better than the ugly vivid
picture of a female Niles that I have in my head right now....why can't
I stop laughing???
Char