Let’s be real, everyone has bad days. You don’t sleep well so you’re tired and grumpy. You have stuff on your mind so you’d rather be anywhere than where you have to be. You wake up out of sorts for no reason. Bad days happen. They’re not special or rare.

When you have a chronic illness like Rheumatoid Arthritis though, bad days are a very different animal. Today is a bad RA day for me.

I’ve had RA most of my life. I don’t remember what it was like to be normal or live without pills and pain. And most days I can deal really well. I can stay positive and push aside the crap that comes with RA and function. I can go to work and go to the store and do chores around the barn. I can give my hobbies some of my attention and I can play with my pets. On a good day I do a darn good impression of a normal person.

On a bad day I just want to curl up in a ball and hide until a good day returns. But I live by one simple rule.

I keep going. Because I don’t have another option.

Having my chronic pain ramp up to a level that chases normal to another county is awful. It is sudden and steals away my resolve to not let RA be in charge. I still get up and get going. Because I don’t have another option.

Some people might argue that I do have other options. I could file for disability. Or just call in sick to work. Those aren’t options for me. Sure, disability is a very definite future option. And sooner or later a day comes when the pain is too bad to push through and I’ll call in sick.

But to me those options taste too much like defeat. RA is a war. It is thousands of tiny battles. And I intend to lose as few of those battles as possible.

Because good days will always come back around. And those taste like victory.