Schizoaffective Disorder and Feeling Hopeless

I’ve been feeling hopeless a lot lately. I have arthritis in my knees, and my schizoaffective disorder is making me feel hopeless about it.

Schizoaffective Disorder Is Making Me Feel Hopeless About My Arthritis

My orthopedic doctor tried a cortisone shot. Well, that only made things worse. Recently, we tried hyaluronic acid injections. Hyaluronic acid is similar to the cartilage tissue in your knees that lubricates the knees and creates a buffer between your bone joints. Your bone joints rubbing together without a buffer is painful.

The hyaluronic shots only made things worse as well. My doctor injected the shots into my right knee. The first shot went fine. The second shot caused my knee to swell up. I got the second shot on a Tuesday, and it started to feel painful Wednesday. My husband Tom checked for swelling on Friday. Yes, it was swollen all right, he confirmed. I couldn’t tell for sure by myself because my knees are so oddly shaped it was hard to know if they were swollen. I got the second shot six days ago, and my knee is still sore.

My schizoaffective disorder is always calling for an emergency, and it’s doing the same thing with my arthritis. I’m very disheartened that the two treatments I've talked about here didn't help.

Things to Be Hopeful About Despite Schizoaffective Disorder

I am doing physical therapy, and I’m doing my best to take that very seriously. When I thought I only had a torn meniscus in my left knee and didn’t have arthritis, I gave up on physical therapy--partially because certain exercises were hurting me. True, I did tell the physical therapist we would have to stop that exercise. But, overall, the therapy didn’t seem to be helping, and I thought surgery to repair the torn meniscus would make everything better. It did, and, this time, the physical therapists say I’m making progress. So that’s something to be hopeful about.

But I can always find something else to set me back. One of the reasons I’m feeling hopeless is that I’m worried my arthritis will ruin the Tori Amos concert Tom and I are going to later this month. Tom is one of my safe people, meaning one of the few people I feel completely safe around. That’s a good thing since he’s my husband. But I’m still worried.

I’m not as worried since I had this thought, though: many years ago, Tom and I went to a Van Gogh exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago and I started to feel very anxious. But I calmed myself down by telling myself that Van Gogh went through the same things I go through. In a similar way, although Tori Amos may not have schizoaffective disorder or bipolar disorder, she gets it about how painful life can be. You can tell by the music she writes. The Van Gogh exhibit was a safe place, and the Tori Amos concert will be a safe place.

So, I should be looking forward to the concert. Another thing I’m looking forward to is that I’m starting a weight loss plan at the end of this month, after the concert. I’m going to see a dietitian and a nutritionist and hopefully learn exercises I can do even though my knees are feeling bad. I’ve never been a fan of diet culture, but weight loss takes pressure off your knees, and also, it’s not an injection or a pill that could have side effects or that I could have a bad reaction to. I know it’ll be a lot of work, but I’m ready; just like this time, I was ready for physical therapy. Besides, I only want to lose about 15 pounds.

So maybe I’m not so hopeless after all.