When I was 19 years old, I had the opportunity to work in an office with highly skilled computer programmers and technicians. Daily, I was surrounded by the future of technology and the trials of several resources we take for granted today, such as portable computers and e-mail.
Being much younger than my knowledgeable superiors, I was taken under their wing, so to speak, and often heard comments such as, “Imagine what the world will be like when you’re my age,” which led to multiple conversations about life experiences. As we became more familiar with each other and shared details about our lives (everything from family issues to traveling to education, personal matters and more), a statistician and some data geeks did a mathematical equation and calculated my ‘real age’ to be comparable to that of a 34 year old.
After listening to their reasons, backed by data and supported by statistics, I humorously agreed to skip my 20s and instantly become an experienced adult. Since I was now closer to the realm of the average office age, we jokingly added carefully calculated years to each birthday I celebrated, which dramatically increased my so-called ‘real age.’
Three months after my 21st birthday, I was diagnosed with severe rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Once we realized the seriousness of my disease and the impact it had on my quality of life, I considered my age in both categories and recognized the ‘real age’ seemed more accurate than my birth age.
In the midst of my worst years of living with RA, I’d sarcastically say to my husband, “We’re getting my old age ailments out of the way so we can focus on yours when the time comes.” After living it, the reality was the joke was really on me.
Having this unintended fascination of age during my adult years, I’ve followed numerous studies and have had umpteen conversations with medical care providers related to arthritis and aging. In recent discussions, I’ve learned that studies reveal people who are diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis have a tendency to age faster than those who do not have the disease.
When I became an advocate to raise awareness about the seriousness of arthritis and related diseases, one of my first goals was to erase the myth that arthritis is ‘an old person’s disease.’ Clearly this is still on my agenda because of the 300,000 children diagnosed with juvenile arthritis and the millions of young adults living with this disease. But after living with RA for the first 25 years of adulthood, experiencing aches, pains, morning stiffness, loss of abilities, the need to rest my aching body, filling larger than normal pillboxes, etc., at the age of 45, I’m feeling rather old. (How old or young do you feel?)
Perhaps I should rethink my goal of erasing that myth totally and start emphasizing, “Arthritis IS an old person’s disease that affects people of ALL ages!”
To me, age is just a number. On some level I view it as a scale, but overall, life is what matters the most, and living each day to fullest and celebrating the years rather than counting them.
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