My mother takes the medication offered. Yes, the side effects can be vicious when you're at the higher dosages, but that's usually with more severe rheumatoid arthritis.
My mother is crippled, as I said, all her joints are swollen, her toes and fingers have been pulled to the side, and she has a claw like hold. She shuffles, rather than walks. She has special shoes made, which she loathes as they look hideous. She is in constant pain, when it gets too much she takes the maximum pain relief going. She hunches, she has assistance to shower, she has a walking stick with 3 legs, should use a wheel chair for trips but insists on the wheeled walker (zimmerframe type thing, with a seat which you can sit to rest on) and trips out are rare and take all morning to prepare for, someone does her shopping once a week, prepared food is delivered. Her house has had rails installed in the shower, doorways, next to the bed, etc, a higher chair at the dining room table with arm rests so that she can actually get out of it, her bed is raised so that she can get off it, door has a magnet to hold it open so she can get out without it slamming on her, steps have been modified with gradual ramps, etc.
They often put her on experimental medication, because the standard stuff isn't effective anymore. The side effects of the medications are vicious, because she is in such mega huge types, and high doses of them. Some of the ones she has been on are ones for cancer, but taken in different ways and doses.
She turned down an operation to fix some of the joint damage many years ago, because she feared my father wouldn't give her enough assistance when she was in recovery and she couldn't trust him to look after us - I think she was a daft fool and should have let the house become a pigsty for the duration, because there is no way they will ever operate on her now, if she goes into remission phases they are too terrified an operation will bring it back with a vengeance. Pride got in the way of a treatment and that horrifies me. (None of us children knew about this at the time.)
You need to STOP it getting to this point. You need to DELAY its onset. Today's medication is vastly better than what she was offered 40 years ago - yes, 40 years of pain. You need to stay mobile in order to keep it at bay. You huddle up in pain and the disease will progress more. You need pain relief. Stop being a martyr with the pain.
Your body is attacking itself, it's an auto immune disease. A lot of money has gone into researching it, the medicines are improving all the time. Please take them.
But do improve your diet, it will help you stay healthy and minimise the side effects. Do investigate natural pain relief, it will all help. Tens machine (works for all pain, not just labour!) herbal creams, etc. Be aware that arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis are totally different diseases. Don't get confused with treatment recommendations.