It's march of 2003 and after a lot of doctor visits, My doctor tells me I have RA, with a SED rate of over 250, He puts me on an agressive 14 mg methotrexate plan.

While in a full blown flare up I learned to deal with great pain, and with putting fake smiles on my face so my children and wife can get through there day without worring about Me.

I couldn't kick a ball to my eight year old son in the park, or even carry my three year old daughter up the stairs to put her in her crib, I was barely able to get myself out of the rest room at times.

 That was then this is now, after I tried many things to turn off this RA switch in my body I somehow found the right path for me to be free of RA for the last seven years.

Saturday Octorber 8, 2011 in Kona Hawaii I completed the Ironman World Championship.

 It was an early morning start 7am consisting of a 2.4 mile open water swim, without the aid of a wetsuit and then a 112 mile bike ride and then a 26.2 mile run, I finished at 10:47pm.

When I had full blown RA I asked myself why me ? I guess for me the months without knowing exactly what was wrong with me was the hardest, I still remember looking at my face in the mirror and seeing deep sunken eyes and the look of death, that changed me forever as well as not being able to care for my kids the way I felt I needed to.

This gift of RA gave Me a second chance at a healthy living, I now know whats hard and whats easy. RA and a flare ups......very hard, and doing this Ironman was very easy.

RA set my pain threshold very high.

I know now that I always was an Ironman, when we have RA we learn to dig deeper than anybody can understand just to get through everyday not just one that at the end we get a medal if we finish.

We with RA do an Ironman everyday not for the medal but to see smiles on our familise faces when they ask us how we feel and we say GREAT!