Jazzercise Helped Me Win! Now, I Have Arthritis, but Arthritis Doesn't Have Me!

Angela is pictured third from the right.

When I was diagnosed with Systemic JRA at 17, I was already less than active. Other than high school gym class, I was not much into exercise. Even worse, it took almost three months of no mobility before I was diagnosed. Once I started steroids, I felt wonderful again -- physically. But, I fell into the dreaded fat-skinny person category -- I looked skinny but it wasn't muscle, and I wasn't healthy. 

In college, I tried hitting the gym, but it was never consistent. Despite having an athletic facility just a five minute walk from my dorm, I never wanted to go. 

I started working out for a really vain reason -- I'd started gaining weight when I was student teaching, and by the time I graduated, none of my clothes fit. My mom suggested Jazzercise -- a workout program she had done years before, so we went together. After a week, I was hooked. I went from doing two classes a week to three to five. It wasn't about weight loss... it was about moving and finally, finally having energy again. The more I moved, the better I felt. I'm lucky. I'm able to move and jump and lunge and squat with relative ease, which, I know is not the case for so many with our disease. After a year of taking class, the owner approached me and asked if I had ever considered being an instructor. 

The arthritic aerobics instructor. That's what I've become. I currently teach three classes a week, and while I may not move quite as well as someone without arthritis, I still move. 

It's such a catch-22. You have to move to feel better. But it's hard to move when you feel so incredibly miserable. Moving will give you energy. But you have to have energy to move. I get it. It's complicated.

The best, and, only, advice I can really offer is to move. Move as much as you can in whatever way is comfortable. Take a lap around the kitchen table a few extra times a day. If that feels okay, go around the block. If that's not a struggle, try an elliptical. Find a yoga class you like. Go for a bike ride with your kids. But do something. Move in some way. Because otherwise, the arthritis wins. 

Two summers ago, I started running. Never had I EVER considered myself a runner. It was out of necessity -- something I started on a vacation where I had to move. I don't pound my feet into the ground, and there are days that my knees and hips hurt afterward, so I don't push myself to my limit. I don't run fast, I don't even run far, but I run. I don't run to prove anything to anyone else. I don't even run to prove anything to myself. I don't run to spite my arthritis. I run in spite of it. 

I have arthritis. But arthritis doesn't have me. And I intend to keep it that way. 

- Angela
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