The Morning My Knees Wouldn’t Unfold

I was in sixth grade, still small enough to believe that running laps around the neighborhood could solve anything. That day, I ran until my legs gave out, then fell asleep with the kind of exhaustion only children know. But the next morning, something was wrong. When I tried to stand, my knees refused to unfold. Pain shot through them like betrayal. I couldn’t rise.

My mother carried me on her back to the local clinic. I remember her breadth, steady and close, and the way the doctor said “arthritis” like it was a word I should already understand. A shot, some pills, and within days I could stand again. But the pain didn’t vanish—it migrated. Elbows, wrists, ankles. Each joint whispered discomfort, like a secret passed from limb to limb.
The doctor called it rheumatoid arthritis. I didn’t know what that meant, only that it sounded permanent. For two years, I lived with it—this quiet ache, this suspicion that my body had turned against me. And then, just as mysteriously as it arrived, it left. No fanfare. No explanation.

In my late forties, I had a blood test after noticing that my two pinky fingers had become slightly deformed. No rheumatoid markers. Nothing to suggest I’d ever had the disease. I stared at the results, wondering: If it wasn’t rheumatoid arthritis, then what was it? Growing pains? A virus? A misdiagnosis born of haste or lack of knowledge?

I don’t blame the doctor. But I do feel lucky. If it had truly been rheumatoid arthritis, I might still be living with it—its slow erosion, its daily negotiations. Instead, I was granted a reprieve. A mystery, yes. But also a mercy.