So here’s a post I’ve been meaning to get to, otherwise known as “The Story Thus Far…”

In the summer of 1997, fresh out of my first year of college, I took on an ambitious counted cross-stitch project, which in conjunction with the large amount of typing I was doing, triggered pain in my forearms that was diagnosed (by someone at my childhood pediatric practice) as tendonitis. Cue wrist braces, anti-inflammatory drugs, and rest. But the problem was not resolved for long with that prescription. Things were better, and worse, and always exacerbated by things like typing, packing to move, rearranging furniture, scrubbing…. And slowly, slowly, the bad times got longer and the breaks between got shorter. I stopped cross-stitching. Stopped playing video games. I went back to the doctors periodically, but none of them had much to add to that initial diagnosis.

Sometimes I had health insurance. Sometimes I didn’t. I did physical therapy three separate times at two different practices, with three different therapists. I eventually stopped pushing my own shopping cart. Stopped reading mass-market paperbacks. Quit my cashiering job. (Then focused on something else for a while after I had a baby… but didn’t give up my PT exercises from the summer of 2009, even after recovery from my C-section made me take a long hiatus from them.)

Things were still slowly getting worse. So I typed a massive manifesto and went to my doctor again. (Of course, it was really my husband who typed it for me. I wasn’t doing much typing at that point.) She referred me to a rheumatologist, who diagnosed hyper-mobile joints and sent me to a new physical therapist who started strengthening my upper back and stabilizing my shoulders. Those workouts started last October, and led to about a 25% improvement in my symptoms. I went back to my rheumatologist, explaining that the remaining pain seemed more centered in my neck. I got a neck X-ray in April of 2014, revealing arthritic deterioration in my cervical vertebrae that was the original cause of the cascade of symptoms that snake down my arms (particularly the right arm) and were mistaken for tendonitis in the first place. (Which is not to say I don’t have hyper-mobile joints. I do. And that plus years of poor posture (exacerbated by my weak eyesight) is probably what injured my neck in the first place.)

Yeah. So, cue the fifth round of PT at a fourth practice, my own personal durable medical equipment, and an ongoing reliance on anti-inflammatory drugs whose warning label makes me nervous. And things are better. Not perfect. But better. Who can say what my future holds? Doubtless a lot of arthritis, amongst other things. But I have the tools now to make the most of what my life has delivered. My kit includes all of that medical stuff, but also daily meditation, amazing friends and family, and a commitment to vivid, juicy, heartfelt living, even on the painful days.

I went wading in Parsons Brook with my daughter today. Ankle-deep in the current, surefooted on the mossy rocks, I felt pretty damn unstoppable.