New from PA, but not new to pain | Arthritis Information

Hi my name is Correna, all my friends call me Rena. I'm 31 yrs old and I've been married now for 6 years to my best friend. It's hard for him to understand the daily pain I'm in and he sometimes gets frustrated.

Sorry for the long post ahead of time....

Two years ago I was dx with hypothyroidism and had to have 1/2 my thyroid taken out due to a nodule that wouldn't stop growing. Since then I've been put on meds to control my levels and so far so good, we are still trying to get it fine tuned though. Over the last few years I've been experiencing some weird and persistant symptoms. I thought most of them would go away when my thyroid was taken care of but they haven't.

For the past 3 summers I've been experiencing problems with them increasing every year. I've been working with my pcp and getting some generic blood work done before heading off to the rhemo. So far I've experienced mild tingling in my hands and feet (feels like a phone on vibrate under my skin), swelling in my ankles and knees, back and major neck pain (see a chiro every 3 wks), loss of strength in both hands, general fogginess and forgetfulness, dizzy-like I'm walking on a rope bridge and not feeling rested after sleeping (which I've never had a problem with before). I've had my glasses prescription change 3 times in the last 2 years and my opti is even confused! lol Last year I had blood work done before seeing my endo and I had a positive ANA of only 1:80 but he didn't seem too concerned about it then.

For the last few years I've pulled muscles in different parts of my body by doing simple things. I've pulled a muscle in my back leaning over the bathroom vanity putting on my makeup. I couldn't move for days and I was taking muscle relaxers! That's just one good example. It seems to be to easy for me to pull a muscle from my lower back to my neck. I also have a tendency to get charlie horses in the middle of the night every once in a while.

I've gotten some tests back in June and my C-reactive protein levels are @ 30.0 mg/L and my SED rate is 46 mm/Hr and my ANA now is 1:160. I've recently had them retested (mid August) and they are still climbing. I'm in so much pain and discomfort that my mood swings are horrible.

I've seen one rheumy and she said all my pain was from my hypermobile joints. But I don't see how dizzyness has to do with my joints. So I was sent to a neuro. for the tingling and dizzyness. I also had an MRI came back with vasculitis (sp?), and old demyling disease. The neuro said the MRI was fine and was clear. He dx me with migraines without pain and gave me topomax which didn't do anything to stop the dizzyness so I stopped taking it. My pcp wasn't too happy with the neuro or rheumy so in a last ditch effort he sent me to a rheumy out of the area.

The 2nd rheumy ran different and more tests, listened to me and recently dx me with inflammatory arthritis. What kind I don't know. I tried to look it up when I got home but couldn't find anything on just inflammatory arthritis. He gave me a script for sulfasalsine (sp?) and I just started taking it this weekend with no bad or weird side effects (I'm very nervous about new meds). I'm currently taking 500 mg and I'm to work my way up to 2,000 mg a day.

I'm also seeing a pulmonologist for my sleep issues and it turns out I have sleep apnea which I picked up my CPAP machine 3 weeks ago and I'm still trying to get used to it.

I'm glad I've found this site, so far from what I've read I'm going to need to change alot of things. I enjoy doing alot of things in my free time but lately I feel to be only running about 50%.

It's nice to meet everyone and I hope I can learn alot from all of you!