PsA Made Me Question Who I Am

When psoriatic arthritis (PsA) changed my ability to do the things I thought defined me, I questioned my identity. Here’s what I learned about myself.

“Who am I if I can’t physically do all of the things I’ve always been able to do?” This is a question I asked myself more times than I can even count when I was first diagnosed with PsA.

I’ve always been a very active person. I grew up as a competitive gymnast and practiced 20 hours a week from the age of 10 to around the age of 16.

Gymnastics was my entire life, and being a gymnast was all I had ever known. For a long time, when anyone asked me about myself, the first thing I would say was, “I’m a gymnast.”

I eventually quit gymnastics before the start of my junior year of high school (because of chronic wrist pain), but even after quitting, I immediately filled the empty space with running.

I remained as active as ever, and instead of priding myself on being able to do backflips on 4-foot tall, 6-inch wide balance beams or front flips on the floor, I reveled in being able to run.

When asked the question of “Who are you?,” my answer went straight from “I’m a gymnast,” to “I’m a runner.” Again, I was what I could do. In 2015, I ran the Chicago Marathon, and a few years after that, I started training to run a 5-minute mile.

In 2018, I also became a nurse. I worked extremely hard to become a nurse, and when I finally did, I labored long, 13-hour shifts in a busy, fast-paced hospital caring for blood cancer patients. I loved my patients as if they were my own family.

This quickly became another way I identified myself. Who am I? Well, I’m an oncology nurse.

For a long time, I thought that who I was and how worthy I was depended upon what I could do and how well I could do it. Toward the middle of 2019, though, my world flipped upside down. I started experiencing significant pain and stiffness in my hips.

This pain and stiffness got worse as time went on, and eventually, it forced me out of being able to run entirely. I went from running a 5-minute, 43-second mile to barely being able to hurry across the street to avoid an oncoming car. Eventually, it also forced me to quit my job as an oncology nurse.

Suddenly, I had both running and nursing the way I had known them taken from me. It felt like it happened overnight.

Without being able to be active and without being able to help people the way I had previously … Who was I? What did I have to offer the world?

Losing my abilities to PsA (even though I eventually regained some of them after finding the right medication) taught me much needed lessons about my worth and myself. I am not what I can do.

My worth doesn’t change even when my abilities change (which they will continue to do throughout the rest of my life). Gymnastics, running, nursing … these were all things I did. They don’t make me who I am. They never did.

I am still me even when I can’t do backflips on beams, run marathons, or work in fast-paced hospital settings. I am still just as worthy when I can barely get off the couch as I was when I was running a 5-minute, 43-second mile.

The question “Who am I?” has remained the same after all these years, but my answer has changed. I’m not a gymnast, I’m not a runner, and I’m not even a nurse. I do these things. I’m Jenny. And I have a lot to offer the world just by being me and existing here exactly as I am. The same goes for you.