Arthritis Commiseration Thread

Anyway normal's a crap word, I should have said infrequent.

when i finally get the arth, i'm willing to bet it will in my right hand, lower three fingers.

oh well; at least i'll still be able to play the bass.

Which, BTW ... FOUR MONTHS LATER, I finally have an appointment to have my initial consultancy in order to have the big lumpy growth things taken off my wrists!

Three cheers for the NHS. Hip hip ... ::sorry we'd give you a cheer but we have a waiting list for cheering::

I've been to a different doctor in my new neighbourhood, and it's not arthritis in my ankles, as I suspected. I have TWO MORE cyst-y, growthy, bursa-type things on my ankles which are causing all the pain. I've finally got some kind of medication to reduce the inflammation (the doctor said it would take a week or two to take effect, but I felt relief within HOURS) but they will have to come off.

Supposedly, they're sending me to a clinic with no waiting list this time, so maybe it will happen soon. Cross your fingers.

Apparently bursas are perfectly normal and natural, everybody has them. Mine have just decided to swell and become inflamed.

Apparently, ill-fitting shoes play a part, but also immoderate exercise. Such as being dragged across London at great speed. Hrmmm.

"get used to it, it'll only get worse. there are surgeries out there for it, for professional athletes, but not someone like you."

oh you can play football again, but is it worth it?

I simply will not accept not being able to function like a proper fucking human being.

not arthritis

Both my ankles and one of my knees just don't function like they should any more.

I'm pretty certain that arthritis has settled into one of my knees and my elbows. I think it's just garden-variety osteoarthritis and I'll see my doctor soon about it. What worries me though is rheumatoid arthritis. I noted a couple of people on this thread had it. Anyone else?

All the women on my mom's side of the family have/have had it so I figure my chances are high. My mother, aunt and grandmother all have had their finger joints deform so they aren't able to do some things anymore. My mother says hers started in her late 30s. This terrifies because if my finger dexterity goes, so does my livelihood and every type of hobby/creative endeavor I have. Does anyone have experience with this type? How and when did it begin?

i had juvenile arthritis in my left ankle when i was four. i was in hospital for a couple of weeks i think, they did something to my leg (i came out with an toe-to-knee cast on it) but i don't know what - and neither does my ignorant mother. i should probably try to get hold of my medical records. i was put under general anaesthetic for whatever it was, so i'm guessing maybe it was some kind of steroid injection.

i've been getting intense cramping in the ball of my right foot for the past couple of months. someone ran over it when i was 6 and i never told anyone, so potentially i got a minor fracture that never healed, and now i under-pronate on that foot pretty severely. the pain is worse in the mornings when i first wake up, and when the weather gets colder, so i'm concerned that it's arthritis again. because i work on my feet all day (and now also all night, since i got a second job), the under-pronation is also affecting my whole leg and making it ache.

arthritis is a bitch. i don't remember much from when i was a kid, but i remember being in screaming pain for a couple of days before my mum took me to a doctor.

yikes. You should get that foot checked out!

Yeah my insurance switches from HMO to PPO in September. I think I will try to go straight to a rheumatologist then if nothing else in a preventive measure. My normal doctor is not super-effective and would probably just give me some naproxen.

More arthritis sadness here. I haven't been able to stand for very long at a time since sat. Am staying at home today as I just can't hack the four flights up to my office.

i'm so scared

i'm just a big scared bag of bones

jill's daughter on real housesives of new york has arthritis

so is the cracking knuckles thing true or what?

I know it's a comiseration thread, but I thought this might help anyone who's dealing with rheumatoid arthritis now, for anyone who's scared/depressed, or just in chronic pain:

My mum got full-blown rheumatoid arthritis in both knees about 10 years ago. It was so bad she could hardly walk from one end of the house to the other...even just walking to the car, she'd have to take your elbow. Lots of pain, lots of depression...it really, really did a number on her. But 10 years on, she's been given the closest thing to a clean bill of health that a rheumatoid sufferer could get. It's not eradicated, but she's now on 12 month checkups, which hadn't happened before. No miracle cures...she took the yukky steroid drugs, had the cortisone, got the fluid drained when it got too bad...but she also did everything she could to keep trying to exercise, even if it was just walking a tiny bit every day...she adjusted her diet, and lowered her stress levels (they were incredibly high, trust me) and she just kept trying to stay on top of it. And though it's been over a long, long period of time,m it's paid off.

It's a horrible suit-of-armor of a disease, and it does awful things to your self-esteem...but I just want other people to know that if you have the patience, you can chip away at it.

cracking knuckles thing is not true

so happy for your mom

thx iatee

There are a lot of newer medications available that really help with various forms of autoimmune disease. They're biologics that selectively depress the misbehaving parts of the immune system. The medications have risks of course, but are a good thing to look into.

Any useful suggestions for dealing with bursitis?

i didn't realize how bad rheumatoid arthritis was :(

vegemite's post :( but also encouraging that your mom found some methods of assuaging the pain and other problems.

Think I have arthritis, might forswear Red Wing boots entirely now

where does it hurt?

posting in this thread b/c I'm getting close to 1 yr on Humira and my suffering from Ankylosing Spondylitis has decreased dramatically. I don't limp everywhere anymore, for one thing. No excruciating flares. Decent improvements in range of motion in PT. I'm not scared of taking short walks anymore. I can almost stand up straight for the first time in years. Inflammation markers were down by an order of magnitude when I did blood work over the summer. Next rheum checkup in a few weeks. There's something kind of dubious about getting better with the help of the world's most profitable drug, but I'm undoubtedly getting better.

Apparently I have arthritis? I don't know what kind because the doctors have just been calling it "puffy joints" and "mild inflammation", none of which sounds very bad, but then they hand me leaflets written by arthritis charities and tell me they'd definitely recommend I go on scary-sounding pills forever even though it's not nearly as painful now as when I first got referred for tests.

The internet tells me that it's best to catch it early, so maybe that's why they're so keen on me taking potentially liver-destroying pills (it also notes "do not take if you suffer from allergic disease" - what does this mean? does my v. mild hayfever count? what about these mysterious skin rashes I get every so often which always clear up before I see the rheumatologist?), but hell, they haven't even told me that outright.

Goddamn it, tell me technical terms, tell me facts and figures, at least tell me what's wrong with me and what the outlook is and why you're recommending things.

So. What are other ILXors experiences? Has anyone here taken or got any thoughts on sulfasalazine?

(I know the blame is 95% with me for not asking more questions but my appointment ran v. late and I was called in just as I was texting my lift to give up and not wait, then I hastily texted back and spent the entire appointment wondering how quickly I could be out of there so as not to piss off my lift home any further, so... so yeah that's my fault.)

Hi, rheumatoid arthritis club member here. Diagnosed January. On methotrexate and hydroxychloroquine (sic), following steroids. Feeling better than I have in about two years!

Just osteoarthritis in one knee for me. Still a pain, literally.

got psoriatic arthritis, though it's much better than it was, no flare-ups in over a year, the index finger on my right hand is still fucked

My right hip hurts basically all the time, though usually ignorable so. a hip surgeon told me in 2021 that I could expect to need both hips replaced in about 20 years, putting me in my early 50s. Sucks!

The second toe on my right foot has looked like chipolata for about three months, not particularly painful though. I don't even know if it's arthritis, initial tests ruled out both gout and arthritis but apparently they're not conclusive. I had an appointment with a rheumatologist for next month that got cancelled and re-scheduled till March - and it's a telephone consultation. The delights of the NHS!

Maybe I should have accepted this appointment at the rheumatologist after all.

I went through two MRIs last year, one for the hip and one for the shoulder. The shoulder just confirmed a chronic tendinitis, the hip returned nothing but it's the one that has been driving me crazy for years, by forcing me to constantly adapt my walking and it's always on my mind. Initially (8 years ago ?) it wasn't in the hip, it was first a traumatic inflammation in the foot from excessive running after no warm-up. Then it sort of crawled up to the knee and now the hip. I'm not even sure how to locate it, it's way up, seemingly affecting both movements with the adductors but also in the glute muscles / piriformis (a fake sciatic ? a real one ?). After the MRIs, my doctor sent me to an orthopedic surgeon, a jerk who dismissed my case when he confirmed there was nothing to operate. I went to the osteopath, and the deep massage on the tendon seemed promising, but the problem is not disappearing completely.

Now I am unsure between trying another doctor (I have a rec), getting my feet / gait checked, going to the physio, or seeing that rheumatologist. I was ready to throw money and solve the problem for good last year, but I maxed out my deductible and I only have a self-diagnosis to show for it. At the same time, it's sort of better, I can walk almost normally now, it's more in the morning and daily movements that I notice. I'm still too scared to run regularly (there's no pain when I run, it's in the next days when the muscles are cold that I feel broken and unstable), so I've taken up swimming again.

It's crazy how such chronic problems are so common (in a sitting society) and the medical system seems so inadequate.

Jan/Feb is always the worst time for my flareups, so not surprised to see the thread bumped now. The fact that most forms of exercise aggravates it has led to me putting on a few pounds every winter, and since I don't lose it in the spring / summer I'm now fairly overweight. Got a Wii for the kids at Xmas and have been doing Wii-fit, it tells me to balance my weight more evenly every morning, think it may be taking the piss.

In November 2021 I was having a lot of pain in both big toes - I had bunions diagnosed 5 years previously but they hadn't caused me a lot of problems - so I self-referred to the podiatry department at the Whittington Hospital. Today I got phone call saying I had an appointment to see a podiatrist on 8th February, that's 8th February 2023, of course. The thing is the bunions haven't caused me any pain since November 2021 but, as mentioned above, I'm supposed to be having a telephone appointment about the second toe on my right foot... so I suppose it's a good thing I had to wait 15 months for an appointment because now I can kill two birds with one stone? I think?

Really starting to get this in my left hip. It came on so suddenly that I can't help fretting that I have femur cancer. I don't think it's from bad posture behind the bar...? Just...another one of those getting-older things. A better office chair might help.