I know! Rheumy said a weird thing the other week that I meant to ask
about - I challenged him about why some people had said in that they
had none or very little swelling and he said 'yes but we will not treat
you unless you have synovitis' the area should feel boggy or
spongy? Well my feet do - does anyone have the faintest idea what
this man is talking about - does anyone have this synovitis thing?
PS keep fingers crossed that my jaw gets better soon because I can't open mouth to eat and it is SO annoying.
I believe he is talking about lie fluid build up which will make it feel spongy, kinda mushy when pressed down on it.
I have that in my knees. Sometimes they are swelled with it, then other times they look almost normal with the spongy feeling on certain parts of my knee. I also get that in my elbows, and my fingers as well.
I hope that kinda helped you to understand. I am not good at describing my aches & pains...lol. I get overwhelmed!!
But good news is someone else will come behind me and answer your qusetion even better then I did julie, my jaw has been hurting me but i thhougt it was stress. could this be related to RA. JasonYes. In a word. I lot of the people here have had jaw
pain. What I think has happened to me is that I've had a
palindromic onset of RA - ie intense pain in a joint or 2 for a couple
of days that resolves then jumps elsewhere - that happened in both
sides of my jaw - it was AGONY - now it's just in one side and its
really sore but not agony - but a good 7 out of 10 when I try and
eat. Apparently at least 30% of folk with RA have it in their jaw
- my face - at the joint and near my ear is often tender to touch and
its sore to open and close my mouth. I mean, yeah I suppose pain
in the jaw could be caused by stress, like if you are grinding your
teeth in your sleep for example but if you put it together with the
other pains then maybe its more significant - all I can say is your
doing the right thing going to get checked out - I tell you what
though, if stress caused the level of pain in my jaw, I'd have dropped
dead from the stress by now because there is no way I'd have a tooth
left in my head if I'd been grinding them that hard!
Julie-- I think we all get it, to one degree or another. Sometimes, we're not aware, which I think might be the case with you. Here's some stuff I pulled off the internet. Apparently, there's a test your rheumy could do. Seems, though, that he would have to do it in a joint while it's giving you a problem...
The test takes about half an hour and usually is done in a physician's office or hospital. No special preparations are necessary. The skin over the joint is cleaned with an antiseptic. Usually, a local anesthetic is injected. Using a thin needle, the physician will withdraw a sample of fluid for analysis, including culture
Copyright ArthritisInsight.com