Retirement

You know, my hope is that anyone who "retires" has the joy of living life beyond what they are retiring from - say rather than fighting a disease or something. I received a note in the mail that my rheumatologist is retiring at the end of March.

I knew this day would come. I'm so glad it is this year instead of say 5 years ago.

I started seeing her in 2007 and I was in such a bad place with my rheumatoid arthritis. I was convinced I could heal myself and didn't need modern medicine. She was patient with me and started me on meds very slowly with low dose prednisone. I learned very quickly that I could feel better than I did, and that everything I had done to that point wasn't working.

I am a pill-phobe. I hate taking medicine and the next big drug for me to try was Methotrexate. If you know anything about it, it is a chemo drug and has nasty side effects. For some reason, I trusted my doctor and went ahead and tried it anyway. Long story short - it didn't work, but because I failed on it, I was able to get on Enbrel. ...WHICH CHANGED MY LIFE.

In any case, there was a time where I really idolized my doctor. I gave her some of my power and she took great care of it. She patiently guided me to health and essentially saved my life.

I wish her happiness, freedom and lots of love in her days of retirement along with a great big THANK YOU!!