I'm quickly learning that #scheladerma is no joke or light disease to be diagnosed with. I feel like I'm being rendered useless between my RA and the calcinosis that is creating these hard painful bumps under the skin on my fingers and palms and near other joints and my feet. This is what it feels like every time I try to touch anything hard like a cup or door knob. Just getting in the passenger seat of the car is exhausting merely because of the multiple points of pain like touching the handle and then putting the force to pull on it to open the door and then holding the door and pulling it closed. It's ridiculous, to be honest. 5 minutes into the car ride I'm still trying to meditate the pain away lol.
It's taking a toll on me mentally. I have a family of 13 consisting of myself, my wife, our 3 sons, and our 8 pets, and over the past few months, I've gone from being able to do almost any daily task needed at home like cooking, cleaning, bathing our son, just the normal things you don't think twice about to now spending most of my time staying in bed because my muscles won't work well enough to stand for 5 min. I can't cook because there is so much touching and holding that needs to be done. I can't bathe our son because of the pain from touching the knobs to turn on the water and trying to pick up and hold his soap bottle is like near impossible. If I do do anything it takes me a half hour to do what used to take 5 min.
I feel bad for my Wife, she has to take all of this on because she isn't in the best of health suffering from type 2 diabetes herself. Thankfully our two older boys are 15 and 13 and help out a lot with household chores. I feel like I'm ripping her off; like I'm a lemon and she'll never have the man I was supposed to be or the years that I promised. I love her and I'm grateful for her resilient strength as a mother and wife. Nobody can tell her nothin' and she gets done what needs to be done. She also has a memory like an elephant. She is a true testament to the love, strength, and determination of a loving Wife and Mother and I'll never know why I was deserving of her being placed in my life but I thank God for making it happen every day.
I don't know how this is going to turn out because it seems like these symptoms are coming very quickly and not slowly over time. The skin on my legs and hands is getting so tight it's almost an unbearable claustrophobic feeling I get. Thankfully I think it was discovered and treatment has started early enough so I have that in my corner. I just don't like what I read. There is no nice way to sugarcoat this disease, it's pretty ugly.
That's my rant for today lol. Life is crazy and you never know what is going to happen tomorrow so love those who love you, don't stress about things you have no control over, and enjoy every breath you are given today because you don't know how many you have left.
Thanks for reading! ❤️❤️❤️
-Justin V
