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@johnbishop

Hello @fighter -- Welcome to Connect. Thank you for sharing. I was not familiar with RA Warrior so I did a search and found the website with links to some really good information.

RA Warrior Printouts - http://rawarrior.com/printouts/
RA Warrior Blog - http://rawarrior.com/blog/

@fighter are you able to share what helped you the most on RA Warrior?

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Replies to "Hello @fighter -- Welcome to Connect. Thank you for sharing. I was not familiar with RA..."

What helped me the most on RA Warrior--I don't even know where to begin! Doctors don't educate you about the disease. They don't have time. This is the best educational source because it's accurate; it comes from an e-patient herself, Kelly Young. (You can also read about e-patient Dave; different disease.) Patients can get some of the best information from others who are well educated in their disease, i.e,. Kelly Young. Just a little background: Kelly Young advocates for the Rheumatoid community at the professional level (physicians & research). She's even advocating to change the name to Rheumatoid disease as people think it's arthritis, rather than autoimmune disease. So back to your original question. When I was first diagnosed I was scared. I found RA Warrior through reading. I caught my disease early as I was a pharmaceutical rep. When I was diagnosed, I had no symptoms, but the young rheum I had seen was so panicked, I couldn't see him again. I was panicked then, and started to research RA myself. Most information I saw said RA had bilateral symptoms. I wasn't seeing anything. I found RA Warrior in this research. One of the symptoms I read about was something I had had, but never thought to mention to the doctor as it was before I was diagnosed -- raspy voice at times, and when I'd go to church and tried to sing, nothing would come out! I found on RA Warrior that we have a joint located near the voicebox (cricoarytenoid), which when inflamed can produce these symptoms. When I started to have symptoms, they weren't bilateral. So before I digress even further, RA Warrior gave me education about real symptoms from patients that differ from one to another. I even went on a chat where Kelly had a rheumatologist on board answering some questions, which was helpful. I learned about the struggles others were having, which scared me, but prepared me mentally for the symptoms I would start having and the medications I would eventually be prescribed. This helped eliminate the panicked feeling. I don't know if I've truly answered your question, but I find it's been my best resource for accurate information. (If you read about e-patient, Dave, his life was truly saved by interacting with others who had the same disease; he didn't have much or any choices to live. He found out about a chemotherapy that most doctors didn't even offer for kidney cancer. He found an oncologist that would give it to him, and he lived to tell about it!