My Story: My journey with rheumatoid arthritis

Afshin, a rheumatoid arthritis patient, shares her complicated journey towards health coverage and the security it has brought to her life.

Transcript

00:00

My advice to someone with rheumatoid arthritis would be to not be afraid, and then know you can still have a good quality of life.

00:08

[MUSIC PLAYING]

00:15

The first time I noticed something was wrong was my wrist developed a little bump on my right hand, which was my dominant hand.

00:22

So my parents took me to the ER and they misdiagnosed me as just a sprained wrist, and told me to follow-up

00:29

with a specialist. However, since I was not insured, I just never told my parents that it kept hurting.

00:36

And my parents being immigrants, they didn't know about the health insurance system. So they weren't really aware of the importance of it,

00:43

how it would work, where to even go to get health insurance. I definitely think that there are ethnic disparities in the treatment.

00:50

I think education is a huge, huge piece of it, and just bringing awareness. Same thing goes for mental health. I think it's just a lot of awareness

00:58

is still not happening. When I started working full-time I gained health insurance and it made a huge difference in my life.

01:04

It just-- it makes a whole dark room shine with light when you have health insurance,

01:12

and that's what it felt like to me. When you are looking for an RI doctor-- I looked at tons of reviews on multiple websites

01:21

to make sure I was picking the right doctor. And right from the beginning, I feel like I hit the jackpot.

01:28

I think my doctor was the perfect fit for me. Another thing that somebody may want to look at is the distance-- how far that doctor is from you.

01:36

My doctor was about an hour away, but it was closer to my work than my home so I would often schedule my appointments around that.

01:43

I think medications in general can be such a huge help for people who have rheumatoid arthritis because it slows down

01:52

the train, and that's how my doctor explained to me when I was really fearful of starting any medications.

01:58

So taking them on time and taking them as prescribed will kind of help you slow down this rheumatoid arthritis

02:05

train that has already began. I just-- being with my animals, and my friends, and my family--

02:11

that makes me really happy. I also have found a family of incredible people on Instagram and on TikTok.

02:19

And being able to connect with them and really know that there's somebody else out there who understands is so, so huge.