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Pathophysiology

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Incidence and Prevalence

RA hit me hard Post by ChrisCov 0 Replies

 Rheumatoid arthritis hit me suddenly at 21 years old.  I remember my knuckles getting really sore right after a game of pickup basketball, and then over the next few days they became swollen too.  I went to the doctor and he did some blood work, but by the time the results came back my knuckles had gotten worse and within a month the pain had spread to most of the rest of my body.  I was almost completely disabled.  I couldn’t bend my joints because of the pain, simple activities like grasping a mug or grabbing loose change out of my pocket became virtually impossible.  I couldn’t even get out of bed without using a rolling technique to spare my joints.  
  My doctor put me on sulfasalazine, but it made me really sensitive to light.  I would blister in as little as 15 minutes of sunshine.  After that, I tried several other drugs but none of them worked so I don’t remember what they were called.  Two weeks into a treatment of enbrel and methotrexate, I began to get better.  The pain and stiffness gradually went away and I felt pretty close to normal again.  That was eight years ago and I’m still injecting myself with enbrel once a week and remaining relatively asymptomatic.  I don’t use the methotrexate anymore; enbrel seems to be the drug that working best for me.
  I think that it’s also worth noting that shortly before the onset of my disease; I had surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome on my left wrist.  I’m not saying that the surgery caused my rheumatoid arthritis, but it did come on right after the surgery.

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Can a decrease in prednisone bring on more pain in hands again? Post by sagil 0 Replies

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