RA Post: Modes of Ambulation or Probable Stethoscope Hanging up

This morning I sit, prepping to go to a doctor appointment, my Gra'ma's cane sitting beside me. 

It is hard to be in your twenties and use a cane. It is hard to walk through stores, grabbing whatever seems like it will take five pounds so you can stabilize yourself. 

I am considering getting a 4 wheeled walker. One with the little basket and the little seat. If I figure out how to feel horrible and go to town successfully....I have to get that then I have to get a disability parking sticker. Not because it is required but because those hard surfaces kill me. I will be limping so bad I look like someone with a badly done hip replacement. Enough that people clear aisles for me (one positive point there, let me tell ya). I need a short walk and a place to sit suddenly. 
Around here is a little better. I can just sit wherever, and if I am outside, I am on the grass/garden which is soft. 


I figure that I am hanging up my stethoscope. While I hope to go back into nursing, with the level of illness I have been at, having been home and bed bound nearly 100% of the time for over a year, and my disease is still progressing some....I am hanging it up. I do not think, at this point in my life, God has physically nursing type jobs for me. Maybe this paper I am working on writing to prove some autoimmune medical treatments need change is the purpose for my having gone to nursing school. I want things to have a purpose for God------and I know everything does. It is just confusing to be almost forced into the nursing career and then have that very solidly pulled out from under me. 

We all go through this, though. Not necessarily waking up in horrible pain, but life suddenly takes a U turn with an immediate sharp right faster than we can even say "what? where?"
God is in control. Things may happen by His permission as asked for by the evil ones...yet they are given limits. He allows these things, these violent changes in our lives to create a violent change in us. Most people hate change, and will not give up anything if given the chance to stay where they are.

I am a completely different person. I feel so much older than I did before I was ill. The person I was, and the person I am now would be complete strangers side by side. I actually really like this new person. I have had to learn to not get upset and be upset for very long (causes flares), to be more patient, to stop anxiety and depression (also causes flares) and to handle my worst fear: being chronically ill. In that regard, I do consider my RA to be a blessing. I am so grateful for many things in my life now, and so grateful to my Lord for holding me.