RA Post: Curses and Blessings

I find now, after nearly two years of RA, dropping the wretched Prednisone weight (boy, feed that stuff to anorexics. They'll eat the curtains with the "starving" feeling of Pred!) slowly day by day..that good days with RA are a blessing and a curse, as Monk said in his TV series.
Good days are something ever RA sufferer dreams about, mourns after with many tears if a cold is caught or some other illness that stops therapy, assuring a halt in likely "good" days. 
Good days are also something that, as the Disease rears its ugly, mutilated head and drips poison over and takes hold of our bodies, we cry desperately as good days slip from our fingers. Those good, golden, marvelous, wonderful days can slip from our grasp in mere minutes---and there is nothing we can do about it. 
Medicine fools you. I studied RA. I studied many diseases; especially diabetes and heart diseases. In those diseases there is often a good, solid treatment plan. Diet, exercise, medication coverage. A person lives a fairly "normal" life. Admittedly, there are those called "brittle" in the diabetic world. Those patients have very little, if any, control over their disease. 
I suspected for the last five-six years that I had RA. I went to my provider, we did testing. Sero-negative, as I am now. No markers shouting to the world I have a crippling disease. Well, aspirin worked on the pain; the pain was mild and generally not noticeable. Stressful days at work started to bring it out more...blood tests again. No luck. Maybe if I could have started therapy then. 
Regardless, RA medicine talk in the textbooks are misleading. Take this. Do that. Patient will be under control with proper disease education. Ha! Lies. There are too many variables, too many times the patient has to stop medication therapy: insurance will not cover (I figure if the doctor ordered it, the patient should get it), cold/infection, weird blood results, etc.,etc. 

Good days are a curse and a blessing. A blessing to live life, to feel what life once was. A curse because lurking behind you crouches a Disease just waiting to smother you once more.