Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA)

Parents are one of the largest motivating and influencing factors on children; they are role models, heroes, and even best friends to their beloved children. Imagine an instance where a young girl in the third grade is eagerly waiting for her mother to pack her lunch in the morning and send her off to the school bus. However, the mother unfortunately is just not able to wake up in time in the morning due to achy, painful, and stiff joints; The young girl dejectedly walks herself to the school bus stop and ends up eating an unexciting school meal. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory and autoimmune disorder which affects approximately one and a half million individuals in the United States (Mayo). The immune system of regular
A few impermanent treatments include the use of hot/cold packs and/or medications to relieve the area of joint pain (Rath). A slightly more intensive but still temporary treatment would be physical therapy to ease the joint in pain (Rath). The more complicated, yet somewhat permanent treatment includes surgery (Rath). In terms of surgery, there are three various paths that a patient could potentially take: Joint repair, replacement, or fusion (Rath). With a joint repair surgery, the surface of the joints can be smoothed out or realigned to reduce joint point and as the name itself suggests, a joint replacement involves completely removing the joint in question and replacing it with an artificial joint (Rath). A third type of surgery, joint fusion, is generally operated on smaller joints and it fuses together two bones on each end of a joint essentially eliminating the joint altogether (Mayo). Obviously, the temporary treatments are cheap to obtain; hot/cold packs can be bought at local pharmaceutical stores and medications can be obtained over-the-counter (acetaminophen – Advil, Tylenol, etc.) or prescribed (certain narcotics – Percocet, Oxycontin, etc.) (Mayo). Physical therapy is slightly more expensive but still decently affordable for an average individual; each session is approximately $100 with insurance. The most expensive treatment option are the different surgeries which can
Typically, RA is not considered a fatal or terminal disease as it is rather a chronic disease which lasts a person’s entire lifetime; However, some individuals do unfortunately die from RA itself. In fact, during the early 2000s compared to the general population, the mortality rate for RA was almost ten times higher for both genders