Ailments and Their Add-ons

You get one ailment, and it always seems to bring along its 'friends'. A few examples are cancer with chemotherapy causes digestive issues and temporary baldness. It can sometimes also cause long term cardiac issues - which can eventually kill you. With rheumatoid arthritis you can get things like Sjogren's Syndrome which causes dry eyes and other fun things. A few examples are:

"... [RA] inflammation can result in conditions affecting skin, heart, lung, eyes, mental health, etc. Conditions like osteoporosis, cataracts, depression, cancers, etc. are more common. And add to that infection based conditions like influenza, pneumonia, shingles, etc. and you can see that only attending to RA is a recipe for mismanagement of the disease." 

The technical term for these little 'buddy' ailments are 'co-morbidities' - a nice fun word. I have other ailments that cause more problems of a different kind, not co-morbidities but aggravating nonetheless. My back problems are magnified by my bad knees. If I limp because of one of my knees, I'm straining my back causes more pain. So do I ignore my knee pain, not limp to prevent my back pain?

My main goal (besides finding that magic wand that will cure me) is not to become a hypochondriac and rush to the doctor at every new pain. I take every little ache and pain as it comes. I ask my doctors to make sure what I am feeling is a normal part of my ailments then I grit my teeth and go throughout my day.