Stop Messing With My Mind

The other morning I woke up. My foot felt like overnight, someone must have put it in a meat grinder of some sort. The throbbing. The aching. The shooting pains were terrible. Surely, I knew that if I would look down at my foot and it would be horribly disfigured. Judging by the pain, I might as well cut it off and be done with it rather than attempt to repair the damage.

I pushed the covers off to get a good look at my sure-to-be-mangled foot. I flipped on my bedside light, expecting the worst, and nothing. Nada. Zero. Zip. Not even a scratch. Oh, come on. Surely with all the shooting pain and throbbing, my foot MUST be on fire or something. But, nope. Not a single visible sign of a pain so great that I managed to convince myself that clearly it should be amputated. What I can clearly see doesn't match what I can clearly feel! Seriously PsA, stop messing with my mind!

Somehow, psoriatic arthritis has managed to take a perfectly sane person such as myself and drive me completely batty. PsA has made me question myself, and second guess myself, more than anything I’ve ever had to think about before. It feels like this darn disease has gotten inside my head and scrambled everything up. It’s like my mind is playing tricks on me, but it isn’t my own mind at all. Nope. It’s psoriatic arthritis.

Stop messing with my mind!

Aside from the occasional swollen joint or tiny patch of psoriasis, my pain and fatigue is not visible, not even to myself. I think in my head, “Surely, I’m losing my mind.” This pain and fatigue can’t be real. I must be imagining it. I must be going crazy. I even tell myself (the dreaded), “You look fine!” I don’t accept this comment from other people, why do I keep telling it to myself?

It’s all just a ruse

But, I’m not crazy. Psoriatic arthritis just won’t stop messing with my mind. It makes me think one day, that everything is okay, that I’m on the mend. It makes me think that I’m finally going to get to feel “better.” But you see, it’s all just a ruse, a way for psoriatic arthritis to get in my head. I'm not better. I will never be better. This is chronic. Duh.

Because sure enough, within a day or two, I’m back to feeling like I’m going to die, again. I’m not on the mend. Everything is not okay. I’m not going to get better. It was all just my PsA, messing with my mind again.

PsA can mess with my hearing? What? Huh?

I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you. You must be mumbling. Please speak up. I’m sorry, it’s not you, it’s me. My ears are playing tricks on me again. I don’t know. I could hear fine yesterday. Now today, everything seems muffled, like I’m trying to hear things under water. There’s this constant ringing, like a buzzing almost. I must be imagining it. PsA can’t be messing with my hearing. Or can it? I can’t make up my mind. I better Google it. I must be losing my mind.

There is no limit to the tricks PsA will play on your mind. It will make you think you can’t hear. It will make you think you can’t see. Seriously. I promise, if you are having trouble hearing, it’s not in your head. It’s just PsA messing with you again. Does psoriatic arthritis mess with your mind too?