Deformed joints: Are you too young for rheumatism?
With its new campaign "Me and my rheumatism", the Swiss Rheumatism League is shaking up common prejudices against people with rheumatism. After all, rheumatism is not a little ache, but an often serious chronic disease that can affect people of all ages. "I am young and have rheumatism. That doesn't fit into the pattern of many people," is how one of the protagonists of the Rheumatism League campaign sums it up.
Rheumatism has many faces, but one common denominator. Pain and limitations characterize life with rheumatism. Just 40 years ago, deformed joints were often seen in rheumatism patients. With medical progress, rheumatism has become largely invisible. A great quality of life on the one hand, a challenge for many sufferers on the other. People with rheumatism must explain themselves in the private as well as in the business surrounding field again and again. Not only, but also especially now in the corona crisis.
Since many rheumatism sufferers are reduced by their drug treatment or by their age to the Risk group they worry about their safety and fear possible serious courses of the disease in the case of a COVID-19 illness. The Rheumatism League is currently responding to numerous inquiries from insecure sufferers who receive too little understanding for their situation from their environment. It intervenes and seeks individual solutions with those involved.
The restrictions in everyday life are complex, because rheumatism comprises around 200 different clinical pictures. And it can affect anyone. Rheumatism knows no age. Members of the Rheumatism Council of the Swiss Rheumatism League tell their personal stories on rheumaliga.ch. In the campaign "Me and my rheumatism", they tell of hardships, prejudices, stigmatization and aching joints. They share their experiences with around 2 million sufferers in Switzerland and want to encourage them.
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