#1 – How I Conquered Rheumatoid Arthritis

“Is there a cure for rheumatoid arthritis? How to heal from rheumatoid arthritis naturally?”

Those are questions I kept searching on Google the moment I received my diagnosis, and for all those desperate first few months that followed.

Unfortunately, I could not find the answer I was hoping for: I was desperate to discover that yes, it could be possible to heal naturally. And that inability to find hope only deepened my despair.

I remember the moment clearly. I was sitting in my rheumatologist’s office while he reviewed my blood test results. He looked up and said, “You have Rheumatoid Arthritis, and you also have Sjögren’s syndrome, but at least you don’t have lupus.”

What?

I had already suspected something was wrong. I had seen my results and, as most people would, had googled what the markers meant. But hearing it out loud was something else entirely. I still could not believe it.

I was still trying to process his words when he reached for a book, opened it, and slid it toward me. Pages of photographs. Deformed hands, nodules, disfigured joints. He told me calmly that this would be the evolution of my disease.

I was speechless. I did not understand why I was being shown these images. Tears started falling, and I asked, through sobs, “Is there any way to stop the progression? Any way to heal?”

He said no. I would need to begin treatment immediately with immunosuppressants to prevent deformities. When I asked how long, he did not hesitate: “For the rest of your life.”

I was very unfamiliar with that disease. I asked, “How come I got this? Is it not a disease of old people?”

“No, it’s actually a disease of relatively young women, as it affects mostly women of exactly your age, between 30 and 50 years old,” he said.

He also told me that this could come from my genes and asked if I had anyone in my family with this condition. I didn’t think so, but I told him I would ask my mother whether she knew if anyone had rheumatoid arthritis in my family before.

My next question came from the place of a mother: “Does it affect my life expectancy?” I was no longer thinking about myself. I was thinking about my children. About my husband. Would I live long enough to raise them? Would I one day end up in a wheelchair, depending on the people I loved most to care for me? The pictures he showed me represented degeneration with progressive loss of mobility…

I agreed to follow his advice and start the treatment. Before leaving, I asked what kind of medication it was. He explained it was an immunosuppressant, designed to suppress my immune system.

I paused. “So that means I would be even more vulnerable to viruses and infections?”

He said, “Yes.”

Something about that did not sit right with me. How could making an already sick person even more vulnerable be the answer? But I was not a doctor. So I listened, and I followed the advice.

I left his office with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to manage the pain and I started them immediately. I was desperate for relief.

Shortly after, I began the main treatment: methotrexate. My rheumatologist recommended starting at a quarter of the full dose to allow my body to adjust, then increasing gradually. I would need to take it every week to keep my immune system “calm.”

Life, of course, did not pause. I still had to show up at work and perform. I still had to take care of my children, even on the days I had to say no to playing with them because my fingers hurt too much to move, and I was always feeling unwell.

My doctor had suggested starting methotrexate on a Friday. That first Friday, I was at my desk, mid-Zoom call with a colleague, when something shifted. I started feeling unwell, though “unwell” does not come close to describing it. I could not speak. I could not sit upright. Every part of me wanted to curl up and moan. I ended the call without explanation and walked out of the office.

That was the only sick day I ever took because of my rheumatoid arthritis. Through the pain, through the days, I limped to go to the office. I had never allowed myself to stay home. As the first child of immigrant parents, I was raised to a high standard of excellence. To endure. To be resilient. And above all, I really wanted to continue to deliver at my work.

That evening, I went straight to bed, leaving my husband and children for the rest of the night, while I lay there in agony, asking myself one question over and over: “What is this drug?”

When I researched methotrexate, I discovered that it is the same drug used in chemotherapy for cancer patients. The shock was immediate, but so was the clarity. Suddenly, everything made sense. How could I feel fifty times worse from this medication than from my worst arthritis flare? It simply did not add up.

And then a deeper, more unsettling thought arrived: I was given the same drug that is used for chemotherapy for cancer patients.

If I stayed on this path (rheumatoid arthritis came after 7 years of autoimmune thyroid issues), I would be going into something much more serious than autoimmune conditions. Suddenly, I felt so vulnerable and felt how life could be shortened and how precious it was.

I always imagined that it would be terrible emotionally, but now I was also getting a feel of the pain people under chemotherapy had to go through, even though I would learn later that the dosage for rheumatoid arthritis is only a fraction of what is given to cancer patients for chemotherapy, so what I experienced was actually “nothing” compared to what cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy experience. I just could not comprehend what it means for people going through chemotherapy, and in my despair, I realized even more that there is always worse, and felt really sad that people had to go through this for chemotherapy.

That realization changed everything. It set me on a journey I never anticipated, one that would transform not just my health, but my entire life, and the lives of everyone I love.

What happened next? That is exactly what the next article will be about.