What will she be able to move?

When I see the rheumatologist, besides measuring with tapehow far my back can no longer bend, she gets me to lie down on the bed and she manipulates my leg turning it this way and that and putting pressure on my hips when she puts me foot on my other calf, bending my knee and pressing down to see how my pelvic bones respond, to test stiffness etc.

After last night, I lost some of the confidence I had. Even though I knew, I didn’t want to accept.

This is simple. It’s not weight bearing. We already know my right leg can’t always carry me and a sharp pain shoots through my SI joint as it collapses. I know that lunges hurt and cause weakness after I do them. Same with squats. But stretching my glute like this has been easy. You just felt the muscle stretch nicely. Keep the stiffness caused by AS away for as long as possible.

So what happens when you can’t? When stretching the muscle means twisting a bone that’s actively Ankylosing aka fusing at the joint? Pain. Extreme pain and a dull ache radiating through the entire buttock. A sharp pain that begins that night and has become worse and stiffer and caused greater weakness the next morning.

Is this it? Have I lost yet another mode of movement? Or is it a flare? But then after a flare (a sharp rise in inflammation and symptoms), the healing process causes more bone to build in the joint or among the bone. Either one is a negative.

I am wearing gloves as I type. I am so stiff and in pain. I keep telling the children I need to shower. But the pain of standing, the fatigue I’m feeling. I can’t. So I type and hope to gather the courage. And no, a bath would be worse. Sitting on bones that are swollen from inside is painful on cushioned chairs. Imagine on a hard bath.

Yesterday when my attorney sent evidence he’d filed my divorce plea, I prayed. I don’t know how my future will be as the disease causes more and more disability. I have my son for now as he studies, but if he gets a job far away, who will help me care for the children? I prayed for strength, for the enemies who rejoice when families break apart (my mother in law who’s seen off two daughters in law already cos her precious son is also a philanderer and she’s happy to have his undivided attention) to at least know I cut the cord. She must know her son is not admired by those with morals and his cup does get full just like it will or has for the Heavenly Hand also holding a cup. I prayed for wisdom and strength to fight for the monies he’s given away instead of paying for his children’s home (mortgage ). I prayed for the justice my friend and I have not seen in the church that claims to serve God.

What a scary time in many ways. The physical pain, debilitating and making me wonder if I need to get my walking frame from the garage is unbearable. Nothing is taking my mind off it. My fingers are stiff so I’m typing with only one finger.

I hate that my range of motion is being controlled by my disease, not by my hopes.

I’m being stripped of my abilities bit by bit.

And that’s more frightening than getting a divorce and being even poorer than ever. Medical costs are extreme! Very bad. Very high. But we will be ok just like others who have gone before me are. I don’t know them, but surely somewhere there’s a constantly in pain homeschooling mother of autistic and learning disabled children who is divorced.. in Africa without the benefits (welfare) system of the country that had colonised it. (UK.)

Right?