Any time Patrick! Im glad you liked the spoons explanation. I'm going to start using that one myself should I ever care enough to explain it. The word arthritis really should be left out when telling people things. I have both OA and RA, as most of us do. But people really don't understand the difference. They don't understand how arthritis can affect you whole body, because they don't understand that its your own body attacking itself, not the arthritis. No you can't get arthritis in you bowls, but when your body is doing the attacking, it isn't choosing a joint. It chooses whatever it pleases, but most commonly attacks the joints. And thats the reason I call it an autoimmune disease. You probably didn't need that explanation 😂, but there it is!

Thank you Jessica and Steven for the replies. Jessica, I think the spoons analogy is really good, it makes perfect sense. I will remember it. I also think that sticking to a brief autoimmune disease explanation makes sense. I can see that using the word autoimmune points people in the right direction much better that anything with the word arthritus in it. I also understand that people generally don't want a detailed explanation and they can always ask if they do. Thank you.
Steven, one thing I think we all discover pretty quickly is that RA affects your mind as well as your body, when you are having a bad day physically your mind can feel as though it is the end of the world but, on good days, especially when you've got the meds sorted out it is much better. With reference to my running I was initially tempted to simply give up altogether but over time I've learned that I can still sometimes run, albeit much slower but even so, getting out on a nice day can still feel really nice and of course it helps you to feel better as well. Best of luck.

I thought it was great, Michele! Very true for us!

Love that spoon analogy! So true. I don’t try to explain any more. I get tired of explaining myself. Some people are worth giving it a try but for the most part I just let it go.

Patrick, when I was at PT yesterday, my therapist told me about the spoon theory. This is how she explained it and I find that it rings very true to what we go through. When everyone wakes up for the day, you have 12 spoons. You give an appropriate number of spoons for every task you do that day. For the majority of people, getting out of bed is 1 spoon. For us, it might be 3 spoons. Then you take a shower. For the majority of people, thats also 1 spoon. For us, it could be 3 or 4 more spoons. The basic concept is that we often run out of spoons by the end of the day, so we end up borrowing spoons from tomorrow. So tomorrow we wake up with less than 12 spoons. The majority of people will have spoons leftover every day. But for us, by the end of the week, we might be waking up to no spoons because we kept borrowing them the day before. So what im getting at is, a year ago your run might have cost you 2 or 3 spoons, but now it might cost you 6 or 7 even thought you are slower too. If I didn't explain that well, you can look it up. But it's very true. I tried to give my husband that example last night. He got it, but then started saying that things are sometimes harder for him too. Ugh! He totally missed the point! I never tell people I have RA. I tell them I have an autoimmune disease. For some reason they understand that much better. I don't go beyond that really. Its a waste of time. Just the other day I told someone I had an autoimmune disease and they asked which one (this is the first person that ever asked me that). I said RA. They said oh yeah, I know lots of people with that. I just walked away. Sometimes thats all you can do. Move on with you day.