"If you want to see a hero..."

"... look at a person with RA.  I've never met someone with RA who isn't a genuinely nice person.  With everything they put up with, day to day, they have every right to complain, to be bitter, to be anything but nice."

Those words were spoken by one of the respiratory consultants at the hospital where I work.  He doesn't know me, nor that I have RA - but I thought that was about the nicest thing I'd ever heard a doctor say about a patient group.  My colleague who heard this statement said she immediately thought of me, my martyr-dom and my stoic nature.  My ability to put on a brave face irrespective of how much pain I might be in.  How I still manage to put my patients first when I would be well within my rights to feel as though I would be better off in the bed.

Hearing her speak so positively of my positive traits, I felt a little like an imposter.  Truth be known, I cried a number of times today - simply because standing, sitting, moving, thinking - was all too painful.  I went out for dinner tonight (against my better judgement) for my darling mother's birthday.  The tears streaming down my face as I tried to get myself down the three steps from my front door, then lower myself into the car, then over bumps in the road, then trying to unfold myself from the seat... I had conveniently forgotten how every movement requires bracing yourself for the next moment that will jolt something that hurts.  Now I am laid up in bed, electric blanket cranking, propped up on pillows to avoid the painful joints having unncessary pressure placed on them.  If I didn't know better I'd think at least two of my toes were dislocated judging by the pain they are generating.  Don't even get me started on the bigger joints like knees and hips and shoulders and elbows.  

But then I think of those kind words spoken by Dr M.  How he's in awe of how we cope, how we compromise, how we continue on our merry way with this disease.  It makes me think of how I am secretly proud by the shocked expressions on people's faces when I reveal why I am limping, or wearing my compression gloves, or why I had to take an extended absence from work with no notice.  I'm proud because they don't think I have a disease, they think I'm a perfectly healthy human being.  It means the facade is holding up.  My ability to apply makeup so I look like I've got a healthy glow and have had a full night's sleep is hanging in there.  I do my best to fool the world every day - because perhaps if I can fool them, I can fool myself for a moment.  To remember a life with no pain, no struggle, no compromise...