A long road
Posted , 10 users are following.
Hello group,
I am new to Patient and it has been nice to find somwhere where i can now tell my story and chat with others and exchange thoughts and views on my RA.
Back in 2015 i was a fit and healthy 53 year old , cycling around 200 kilometers a week, and going to the gym at least 3 times a week , and holding down a full time job to boot, living in the Algarve , Portugal life could not be any better for me.
After returning home from a full filled holiday in Asia, i was ready to start back at the gym and take a long rest before my seasonal work starting again in March. All that changed in February when i noticed i was having diffeculty in standing and my ands started to swell and becoming very painful. My local doctor thought i had Maleiria as the symptoms are simular, i never got to see him again as my symptoms got worse and my whole body was racked with pain, mother came over to see me and realised it was something a more serious.
Having returned back to the UK in a wheel chair in absolute agony eating paracetamol by the hand full i ended up in the QE hospital where i was diagnosed with agressive RA, so bad that my specialist Dr Andrew Filer said he had never seen before.
I am now 55 (will be in February) and after having pulmanary embolism's in both lungs, pnuemonia this year and a string of medication (the usual RA medication) i am now on 2mgs of Prednesolone , and Roactimera(an injection once a week) i am now some what on the right road, i still have pain attack's and some of my joints get hot and painfull but only for short periods at a time.
I am still finding it hard to accept my condition and i really struggle with the fatigue, i find it so frustrating that simple things that we take for granted are so much effort, showering, tieing shoe laces, walking,standing for to long , just doing the normal things.
It is a long road, as i was told by Dr Filer, but with his help and the help of the team at the RA clinic at the QE hospital in Birmingham i am a lot better than i was and i have a little bit more to go.
Please feel free to comment or ask me anything we are all here to help each other and exchange ways in wich we can improve our way of life.
I look foward to hearing from any of you.............Andrew..x
0 likes, 40 replies
shirlee86000 Guest
Posted
WOW you have really been through it haven't you? I am in my 50's too and mine all started around this time last year I was in shear alone with my shoulder and I have to say if that pain had carried on so intense I dread to think what would of happened I just couldn't carry on, but it thankfully was short lived I have never felt pain that bad in the whole of my life.
It moved across to the other shoulder and then swelling in my hands moving from finger to finger up my wrists I was just so scared, rheumatoid arthritis was not in my trail of thought as I thought that condition was aching joints etc, I was scaring myself thinking all sorts.
Then in may after tests I was diagnosed with it, I immediately had a steroid injection, which was heaven and put in methotrexate, but that's all another story which I have explained in other posts on here.
I too was fit as a fiddle always doing some kind of exercise, I am much better at the moment though, mine sounds no where near like yours has been, I really hope you get sorted, I just wonder what really makes it start, is it stress? Is it a virus that starts it I don't know, I turkey hope your situation improves
shirlee86000
Posted
That should of been 'really' not turkey whoops sorry
Guest shirlee86000
Posted
Hi shirlee,
Don't worry about your turkey...lol, i am a lot more improved now thanks to the injetions i have once aweek , today (Friday) is my injection day it is called Roactimera, it has taken a while to find the right treatment , as it is a case of different horse's for different course's. I too was on Methetraxate put i have been taken of it after my last lung infection.
I can say at the moment i feel ok, and only get the odd flare up, so there is light at the endofthe tunnel.
Take things easy .