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title: "It's Tricky"
layout: post
image: 
    feature: header_run_dmc.png
---
The title of this post refers not to the classic 1987 single by Run-DMC but, instead, to the trickiness of rheumatoid arthritis and vasculitis as multisystem inflammatory disorders with a range of diverse outcomes.

When you get rheumatoid arthritis, you don't think necessarily that it might lead to: stroke, hearing loss, osteoporosis and associated bone breaks, kidney failure, heart inflammation and damage, inflammatory bowel disease, POTS, autonomic nervous system damage, intense fatigue, abnormal sweat patterns, and severe anemia. You do expect joint damage, pain, mobility difficulties etc. But my rheumatoid arthritis and rheumatoid vasculitis have caused all of the above. Sometimes this is via medication -- for instance, long-term steroid use led to soft bones which caused my recent foot fracture -- but often it's just that the disease affects all parts of the body and you can't choose which.

That is, people who read of my medical record think: my word, you have a lot wrong with you.

But it's really, actually, just one condition expressing itself in many ways. It's tricky, for sure.