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I just did and a lot of the symptoms do match though you're right, the age isn't quite right. Yet when I've taken NSAIDS it really didn't help with the pain. I actually have some prednisone left over from a prescription that I didn't finish so I might try and see if that helps with the pain. I'll suggest it to my sister to look into it. That is something I don't remember her mentioning. She seems inclined to think it's the psoriatic kind of arthritis for some reason.
Do not take prednisone until you have a diagnosis. You may mess up the workup.
Hey guys! Thank you for all your replies! So the labs came back and my doctor thinks I have Lyme disease. They found a borderline positive reading for Lyme with a confirmatory test. RF factor came back negative as well as Sedimentation rate. Everything else was normal except for the borderline positive for Lyme antibodies.
So he started me on Doxycycline for 1 to 2 months. I've had three doses so far. My sister is going to go over the labs. I am still concerned about a sero-negative reading that is commonly found in psoriatic RA like Mikala is talking about and like my sister mentioned. The pain hasn't gotten any better, though no swollen joints yet. I haven't looked in a rheumatologist yet. I'm going to talk to my sister again and see if she also recommends it. I was hoping the Lyme diagnosis is right. It sure is likely with all these ticks that I live around.
Strangely, as DW mentioned the Prednisone did seem to help a bit. The pain in my hands diminished. Yet that was like a day or so after taking it (though I took it late in the afternoon). Not sure if that means anything, but NSAIDS don't help much.
Will continue to keep you posted if there are any new developments!
Hey guys! Thank you for all your replies! So the labs came back and my doctor thinks I have Lyme disease. They found a borderline positive reading for Lyme with a confirmatory test. RF factor came back negative as well as Sedimentation rate. Everything else was normal except for the borderline positive for Lyme antibodies.
So he started me on Doxycycline for 1 to 2 months. I've had three doses so far. My sister is going to go over the labs. I am still concerned about a sero-negative reading that is commonly found in psoriatic RA like Mikala is talking about and like my sister mentioned. The pain hasn't gotten any better, though no swollen joints yet. I haven't looked in a rheumatologist yet. I'm going to talk to my sister again and see if she also recommends it. I was hoping the Lyme diagnosis is right. It sure is likely with all these ticks that I live around.
Strangely, as DW mentioned the Prednisone did seem to help a bit. The pain in my hands diminished. Yet that was like a day or so after taking it (though I took it late in the afternoon). Not sure if that means anything, but NSAIDS don't help much.
Will continue to keep you posted if there are any new developments!
Thank you all for your very helpful suggestions. I wanted to give you an update. The Doxycycline didn't start helping with the pain right away. Incidentally, right after I started taking it, I had a rash break out (did not appear to be related to the doxycycline; my skin is very sensitive and I've been having problems with it being itchy before I started taking it) and took a prednisone taper--which really cleared up the pain. But that ended up returning which I describe below.
I did have an appt with a rheumatologist and while he thought the Lyme disease diagnosis was not correct, he was not able to diagnose an autoimmune disease or anything else since there was not much to go on (the pain was not very bad then, as typical with my body and the things that go wrong with it--comes and goes and tends to "hide" when there's someone around who can actually figure out something about it).
About a week ago then, I had a new pain show up. While I was at my computer, I had that pin and needles feeling in my left arm, from the elbow down. So I thought it had fallen asleep and shook it out. Turns out it didn't go away for about 15 hours. From what I can determine on research, there's something going on there.
I had an appt with my doctor for headaches/nausea which got worse. I brought the pins and needles thing up to him and also a tightness at the base of my spine that's been really annoying. Also, the pain in my wrist and hands had returned (though the other areas of pain remained much better than before I started the Doxycycline). It was pretty bad Wednesday morning. Tuesday it was getting bad, but I thought maybe the damp weather was affecting it. Wednesday was as dry as can be.
Well, low and behold my doctor prescribed me another prednisone taper and a muscle relaxer (which seemed to help somewhat with the back tightness). He told me to let him know if any of the headaches and pins and needles return and how the prednisone/flexeril does with the back (to check back in a couple weeks if things had returned).
So now of course with the prednisone the pain in my hands has all but gone so I don't know if its actually getting any better or worse.
Honestly, I'm beginning to think it may be MS now. The pins and needles tipped me off. It was one of the few common things that can show up like that without any other symptoms. There are a handful of other things that it can be if it's just peripheral neuropathy without any other symptoms (that might be something that I may have; stuff like diabetes and kidney disease I threw out because the tests for those came back normal). Infection was one of them, like if it's still the Lyme disease. It may be a good idea for me to go in for that second Lyme test and see if anything different shows up.
Then there was autoimmune disease (possibility), connective tissue disease (do not know too much about that) tumor and spider/insect bite (definitely a possibility). Of course it could be some weird idiopathic thing that just doesn't have any explanation.
My friend told me both her daughters have MS and for one of them one of the symptoms that led her to the diagnosis was pins and needles in her legs. I actually do get those from time to time to, but they go away with leg movement. I should probably bring that up with my doctor. It seems kind of strange for them to be showing up so often.
Okay, well just wanted to give everyone an update. Will be having a colonoscopy on the 26th, even though the long-term loose stool episode that had lasted for about 5 weeks seemed to go away (I had already scheduled the procedure prior to it going away and wanted to go through with it since I have had so many intestinal issues).
Thanks for the update, I feel for you and know it is hard not knowing what you have.
With my psoriatic RA I get all kinds of weird neuropathy and muscle strains. For a month I had a weird upper back pain that would wrap around my chest and down my arm. I swear if it had been on the left side I probably would have thought it was a heart attack.
I still get all kind of weird pains, muscle problems and pins and needles, but it's been going on for years and has gotten better (with meds) and not worse.
I guess I'm just trying to say not to stress too much. Something I wasn't able to accomplish for the first couple years.
Best wishes, and please continue to keep us updated.
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