Feels better and stops taking her medication

Mrs AP feels better, her pain level is less than 4 (in a scale of 0=no pain to 10=worst or unbearable pain). So she thinks it's ok to stop taking medication and return to her previous daily routine. She does not have a follow up visit with her GP, because she sees no point in doing so. Everything seems better now. Even though she know she has hand osteoarthritis she considers herself luck and her friend, who said that this is a debilitating disease was obviously wrong. She feels ok now. 

Unfortunaly, a few weeks go by and she is back to the beginning, because the pain is back. She feels stiffness and difficulty in moving her hand once more, inability to do her everyday chores. 

She realizes that she probably made the wrong choice stopping her medication and not following up with her doctor. Apparently hand osteoarthritis is a chronic disease and chronic pain impacts all aspects of her life. So, it's clear that she needs to be proactive, go back to her GP and learn how to self-manage better her disease.