I'm a bit late to this, but thought I would put in my two cents anyway...   You will know you've hit the right thing when you sing in the shower again. When you have enough energy to spend an evening with friends. When you end up having a flare for a couple of days because you were out having a good time and forgot about being careful. It's little things like that, things that mean the focus has shifted to your life instead of the disease.   whether you will have pain will depend partly on how effectively your disease is suppressed. Although it is now more possible than ever before to go into remission, many people have to settle for their disease being well controlled, rather than all the way into remission. Your level of pain may also depend on how much damage has happened in your joints before you got to the place where your RA is suppressed. Although you may not experience pain related to active inflammation, if your joints have been damaged you may have pain related to that. It's a different kind of pain - sharper, less tiring somehow. If you do have pain, talk to your doctors about getting better pain management. it is not reasonable to expect you to suck up the kind of pain that interferes with your quality of life. If you have that kind of pain, ask for a referral to a pain specialist, especially one that approaches the topic from a multidisciplinary point of view. It is very possible to learn to live with pain - better pain meds, meditation, counseling, physical therapy, acupuncture, etc. can all help you to get a better quality of life.   once you get your disease under control, it's possible that you will still have to pay attention to managing your energy - working within your limits will make it easier to avoid flareups or overdoing it. Being conscious of where your limits are and getting the rest that you need when you need it will help reduce the disruptions to your life.   it is a reasonable goal for a medication to make you feel significantly better. The problem is that everybody reacts differently to medications. So although Enbrel may work well for one person, it may not work for you. Unfortunately, it can take a while to find a drug that works. You may also want to talk to your doctor about combination therapy - for instance, many doctors combine methotrexate and Enbrel, or methotrexate and one of the other Biologics and it often works better than just one medication alone.   Hang in there. It gets easier. What happened when you saw your rheumatologist?