The Bird

Sadly, I have a lot of joint problems. When I get up from sitting too long, I sound like someone is stepping on bubble wrap. Little pops and cracks sound as I walk. I crack my knuckles and neck often to alleviate the pressure that builds up in those spots. Whenever I do yoga, my body sounds like a bebe gun going off. My mom has rheumatoid arthritis and I’m pretty sure I have it too.

A couple of weeks ago, I felt like a number of my joints has swelled but I couldn’t quite tell because I’m used to looking at them all the time. Nothing looked out of the ordinary to me. My finger joints were especially tender to the touch and hurt more than usual. I decide to ask someone else for an opinion.
My husband was sitting at his computer watching another set of Muppet clips on YouTube when I approached.

“I think my joints are swollen. Can you take a look?”

I stuck up my middle finger for him to look at, because it was the most painful of the bunch.

“Oh very nice. I’m just sitting here bothering no one and you come over here and give me the bird! Very nice!”

I honestly hadn’t even put two and two together. However, I started laughing uncontrollably when I realized what I had done.

I told him that it wasn’t a joke that I was really asking for his opinion. It just happened that the joint that was bothering the most and that I thought was swollen was my middle finger. But he didn’t believe me.

So for all I know, I was going through a brief bout of gout or an arthritic flare up but I’ll never know if he agreed with me because I was not so nice to him. Sometimes pain just makes you do crazy things!