RHEUMATOID arthritis is a debilitating disease which is often mistakenly viewed as the cure of old age even though it can also be a blight on the lives of young people.

Everyday tasks such as going to work, picking up your child in your arms, washing the dishes, tidying the garden or completing paperwork can become excruciatingly painful, laborious and sometimes downright impossible.

Unlike a broken leg or a cut or a bruise RA cannot be seen which can make it hard for those with no direct experience of it to understand what it is like to suffer from it or how difficult it can make life.

RA is a chronic, progressive and disabling auto-immune disease which affects about 690,000 people in the UK – mainly, but by no means exclusively, women.

The Worcester National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society (NRAS) support group meets at Ankerage Green, Warndon Villages, Worcester, on the second Wednesday of every other month between 6.30pm and 8.30pm.

Each time the group has a guest speaker such as a nurse specialist to give useful, practical advice about how best to manage RA from information about medication to the best kind of footwear. More than this, people who go realise they do not have to suffer alone but can talk to people who know what they’re going through.

The co-ordinator is mother-of-two Donna Saunders, of Colin Road, Northwick, Worcester, who has RA herself, having been diagnosed at the tender age of 21.

CASE STUDY: SUE LYMER

A FORMER postwoman broke down in tears, overcome with emotion at her first support group meeting.
Sue Lymer, now aged 47, of Broadmeadow, Chawson, Droitwich, was diagnosed with RA 21 years ago following a blood test. RA has affected her feet, legs and her chest.
Her medication includes steroids, methotrexate tablets which inhibits the activity of the immune system, anti-inflammatories and steroids.
Sue was a postwoman for 22 years, getting up at 3.30am to complete her rounds on a bike but it was often a struggle for her and she was in great pain.
She said: “Sometimes I had to go to work in floods of tears. I was crying with the pain. I was going in and hiding the pain from people. Only certain colleagues would notice what I was going through but others would say I was pulling a fast one.”
Although she wanted to continue working her ill-health forced her to retire in February. At one point she could not walk and needed an operation on her feet. Her left lung filled with fluid as a result of RA which needed to be drained.
She went to the NRAS meeting in Worcester for the first time in August last year and was relieved she did.
Sue said: “It was so good and really friendly. You sit around in a group and people introduce themselves. When Donna Saunders got to me I started crying. You know the people with you have all got the same illness and all of them have the same sort of problems. At the group there were other people in the same boat as me.”
She has been supported by a friend, Roger Burrows, 73, of Miller Street, off Saltway, Droitwich, who knows about what people with arthritis go through because his late wife Catherine was a nurse working in rheumatology in Worcester. Roger, who does things for her around the house and garden, said: “It does stress me sometimes, yes. I know what pain she is in. I understand how she is suffering. It does stress me to think I can’t do anything about it.”

CASE STUDY: PENNY POWELL

A FORMER teacher who had to leave her job because of rheumatoid arthritis said the support group gave her new courage and confidence.
Mother-of-two Penny Powell, aged 54, of Malthouse Lane, Bredon, near Tewkesbury, was forced to retire from her job on medical grounds. She comes to the Worcester group once every two months and says it has inspired her and has been inspired to set up her own support groups.
She began to feel unwell after the birth of her second child when she was 31 years old. Initially she was diagnosed initially with RA when she lived in Stoke.
It affects almost every part of her body, particularly her hands, wrists, feet, knees, hips and back.
She then worked as a teacher in Wensleydale and Swaledale in Yorkshire when she was told by doctors they thought she did not have RA but fibromyalagia, a long-term condition which causes pain all over the body and widespread tiredness.
She said: “A lot of the time when you’re trying to hold down a professional job, you’re trying to hide the fact that you’re unwell. When I was working in schools I couldn’t open the glue because of the weakness. I had no muscular strength. Moving desks, carrying books, just turning the door handle to come into school was hard. The main problem was the paperwork which I couldn’t keep up with.”
She moved to Bredon in 2004 to take up a full-time job as a primary school teacher when she was told that the initial diagnosis of RA was correct although she also has fibromyalgia. She has since been forced to leave her job.
“Rheumatoid arthritis feels a bit like really bad flu. It’s that feeling of being drained and an inability to think straight. I used to love dancing but I can’t do it anymore. I think you grieve for that, for the life you had. You have to learn to pace yourself.” Fortunately her husband Roger does a lot around the house to help, including gardening and lifting.
She says of the support group: “What you get from it is the camaraderie. You don’t have to really explain what it’s like to feel tired and depressed. It inspires you to do as much as you can to help yourself. You get friendly tips and advice from other members. You get understanding and friendship. Donna Saunders runs it in a really friendly, warm way. Coming to the group has given me back my confidence and made me feel like I can do something to help.”