Well I do drink alcohol which you're not meant to do. I don't drink in excess, and I would only ever drink maybe once a week if that, but it's changing those routines, it's just changing, and changing with your friend as well because I'm sure most people, 25 years old and when you meet up with your friends it's always for a glass of wine or a cocktail or something. And changing those routines I found, the first three months I was really strict and I didn't have any at all, anything at all and I wasn't feeling well so you didn't really have to go out or anything. But now that I'm feeling much better and I meet up with my friends I do want to be able to have a drink and I do. Now, I just think I'm not going to worry about it. And the blood tests seem to still be fine so [laughs] But just not to excess, I think it's just everything in moderation.
So, weekends, I normally have quite busy weekends. Although I have like one busy weekend, one quiet, one busy, one quiet. Because I know, but I'm 25 years old now, and I'm young, I want to be out enjoying myself. And I don't think just because you've got RA you have to be, you have to be sensible and you have to make sure that you don't over-tire yourself because you, I don't' want to get ill with anything else as well. But you still want to make sure that you're going out and seeing your friends and doing things, that's real important. So I do.
And what have the doctor, nurses say to you about drinking alcohol?
Just that you shouldn't, well first of all they said you shouldn't drink it at all on the Methotrexate. And then so I didn't, and then I went to see, when I saw the consultant again last time I said, “Oh I'm finding it quite difficult.” And he said, “You can have, as long as you don't go out binge drinking, then you're OK to have a few drinks. That's absolutely fine.” And then that was it really. But like all the books again kind of really scaremonger. You're thinking, “Can't, you know, you mustn't even have a drop”. It makes it sound like I'm alcoholic. I'm not at all [laughs]. But it's just, you know, you understand, you're…
Yes…
…it's, it's a big part of our society
I think if I'd of suddenly woken up and I had to do that it would have been difficult. But before I was diagnosed I was in so much pain that just naturally I started pacing myself completely. I didn't work myself into the ground, I really cut back on my hours at work, I really cut back on socialising or things like housework or cooking. I very much relied on my housemate to do things for me. So it was kind of easy then to, to get into that. It's, what's difficult is if you do have a busy weekend or you have a really busy week at work you do just feel, you know, completely bowled over which you wouldn't feel, which I didn't' feel sort of a year ago, I was absolutely fine if I had a busy week at work. I could then go and have a really busy weekend, whereas now you can't. And so, I guess parts of that are difficult but again because I was just kind of weaved into it, it wasn't too bad.
You can't just think at the spare of the moment, you're going to do something. You really have to organise it. I mean I want to go skiing at Easter. Well we were going to go in February, I thought. “Oh no it'll be too cold for me sitting on the ski lift and things like that.” So you think, “Right, we'll go at Easter.” And it's just making those adjust, making those adjustments. And we have to go somewhere that's got other things because I won't be able to manage skiing all day, every day. You know, there's just, there's loads of examples that are just small. |
