Sometimes it frustrates me that people who have the same diseases I have are doing better than me. I’m not jealous of them, I don’t want anyone to be sick.  It just gets to me that some people can have serious diseases and are able to function so well.  For example, I know a friend of a friend, who was sick for a while; joint pain, feeling like crap, etc.  In fact she goes to the same Rheumatology group that I do.  She was diagnosed with Lupus like me, put on Plaquenil, and then just resumed her life.  She is fine!  She is working!  She owns a condominium!

Why, when I got Lupus, did it disable me to the point where I could not work any more and my life is such a mess because of it?  Why have I never gotten better?

Then there are those people who have more serious conditions than I, have more diseases than me and they still are doing okay in this world!  They are working!  They are working out!

Sometimes when I am getting my monthly I.V. of Orencia, I sit next to people who are getting Orencia or Remicade and they talk about their work, one of whom is a police officer.  One time I was sitting next to a woman who had to be around 80 and she was telling me how she lives alone and has her routines and goes about doing this and that.  And I wanted to say How, how are you able to do this? You are eighty-freaking-years-old and I am forty!  Why can’t I just get my monthly infusion and go on with my life?

My questions and rants are mainly rhetorical.  I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis when I was 16 and with Costochondritis in my early 20s.  Rheumatoid Arthritis came in 2003 with Fibromyalgia to follow a couple of years later.  I worked with my RA for five years and it wasn’t easy.   For the first year and a half of my RA, my feet were so swollen I had to ice them about five times a day.  I brought my ice packs to work, I brought my ice packs on business trips.  I sometimes took up to eight Percocets a day to get me through work.  I sometimes would throw up in the morning and then just go to work.

So, I guess you can’t say I haven’t given it the old college try.  When Lupus came, I just never seemed to recover and other conditions followed.  I know I am sick, know I can’t work, know I can’t do normal mommy things…I just wonder how they can.

But  I’d be lying to you if I told you that I am 100% positive about all of this.

There is a tiny part of me that sometimes thinks maybe I’m lazier than these other people, maybe they just WANT IT more than I do, or maybe I’m just simply crazy.

Confession:  I do know that I used to be one of those other people who had diseases and were working and having babies and going out to dinner and I used to look at people like me now and thought, “I just WANT IT more than they do!  I am triumphing over my illnesses!  They have given up!”

And now, the only thing I do know is that for some reason, I no longer…can’t.