The Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital Trust has announced the imminent closure of the Rheumatology Unit, based on its Ercall Ward since time immemorial, writes blogger Emma Suddaby.

Most of you will be lucky enough to know nothing of Ercall Ward, but for an unlucky minority it is a second-home, a haven of understanding care when the chronic conditions it treats make life alone difficult, dangerous or downright impossible for its patients.

Ercall treats people suffering from many rheumatological conditions but has traditionally looked after many patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

I’ve been an Ercall patient myself for many years – it’s my lifeline, my safety net. Having access to Ercall Ward, with its specialist medical treatments, skilled surgeons, experienced nurses and access to advice on every aspect of living with RA, has enabled me to go out and live the best life I can.

It’s the place that taught me how to accept and live with my condition, and it’s my security.

The Trust have cited gross financial shortfalls to the tune of £7.5 million. Last week I had a meeting with Vicky Morris, director of nursing, and she was very keen for me to convey a message of reconfigeration rather than closure.

She pointed out the many ways in which the Trust would be ensuring that rheumatology patients will “continue to receive the same quality of care that they receive now”.

Vicky assured me the Rheumatology Unit will still exist, the services it provides will still be available. But instead of basing everything on one ward, the many vital services it provides will be based in different areas of the hospital.

They plan for RA patients being admitted for surgery to be accommodated on general orthopaedic wards. There will be beds available on other wards, but patients won’t have the luxury, if you can call it that, of a dedicated physio team, with their own physio room just a few paces away a or a dedicated anything, in fact.

Rheumatoid Arthritis is an incurable, degenerative, systemic auto-immune disease. Until very recently the treatments available were rarely effective, but there have been some huge pharmaceutical leaps over the past few years, as a new breed of drug treatment called Anti-TNF Therapy has revolutionised the typical prognosis of sufferers.

Newly diagnosed patients are immediately given Anti-TNF Therapy and are usually able to go back to living a near normal life.

That sounds wonderful and it really is wonderful but, having suffered from aggressive RA for 13 years, I happen to know there’s a lot more to it than that.

Anti-TNF drugs don’t work all that well for some. Then there are those who can’t take them for various medical reasons.

Even for those who do react well to them, the beneficial effect often wears off after a while – and the National Institute for Clinical Excellence has recently announced plans to change current prescribing rules for these expensive drugs, to allow a patient with RA only one shot at taking them.

If the treatment fails, they will be taken off Anti-TNF’s and will not be offered another type, as is usual currently. If that happens, and it looks likely it will, there will soon be even more RA patients needing regular hospital in-patient care.

And let’s not forget that rheumatoid arthritis is incurable. It is controllable to some extent, less so for some than others, but it will never go away and sufferers will need increasing levels of care and medical intervention for the rest of their lives.

RA is a specialism within a specialism – patients with these chronic conditions can’t hope to receive the same standard of treatment on a general orthopaedic ward. All in all, the decision to close Ercall Ward makes no real sense at all.

For various reasons, not least of them the Trust’s quest for the hospital to be awarded Foundation Trust status, they must prove it is financially stable and sustainable into the future.

And therein lies the problem. There’s no glory in rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis or any of the other miserable conditions treated on Ercall.

Sufferers don’t get better, they cost a fortune in drugs, treatments, scans, operations and care, take longer to heal because their immune systems are suppressed, their operations are more complicated and costly than usual, with recoveries from them frequently blighted by infection.

My condition will not kill me, just condemn me to crumble slowly, painfully, torturously away, robbing me of my abilities, ambitions and eventually my independence.

It took me some serious time and readjustment to learn to live with my rheumatoid arthritis, and the dog’s-dinner it made of my previous life, hopes and dreams.

The consolation for me and many others is in having such a successful, respected facility available 24/7 to retreat to, a place of safety when we’re too ill to look after ourselves. If Ercall can’t look after us, who will?

Ultimately, we all understand the need to save money, and if that means rheumatology facilities at the Orthopaedic must be scaled down and streamlined then of course we would all accept and respect that decision. But close it entirely? Talk about overkill.

I wish Ercall Ward was closing because rheumatoid arthritis and all the other auto-immune diseases had been eradicated, but they haven’t.

• Inspirational Emma Suddaby shares her ” highs, lows – and various murky places inbetween” – with her blog. Emma, a finalist in the 2007 Shropshire Star Woman of the Year competition, was diagnosed with aggressive, destructive rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 22. She has since won a dream flying scholarship with the charity Flying Scholarships for the Disabled and is now training for a National Private Pilot’s Licence.