Advice needed please

Everydaynormalguy

Hi all I hope someone can help me please , I will try keep a long story short (ish) but iv been suffering with joint pain due to psa for about 6 years , I was working full time and nobody looked into the cause of my pain , every time I managed to get time off work to see a gp they just give me painkillers and that was that , each one put it down to wear and tear even though I’m only 30 lol. I recently had to quit my job as it was getting too hard for me to deal with the pain and exhaustion .I recently see a rheumatologist and he says there is 99.9% chance I have psoriatic arthritis and that would explain how iv been feeling for last couple few years . Im just wondering if some people can share their symptoms with me ? Because My fingers and certain joints swell up and hurt after using them , also my hips after walking and using them are really painful and I struggle to walk , but then some things can hurt after inactivity or randomly ? Is this normal ? As I’m struggling to find the right balance , I understand exercise is good but after walking my hips are really painful , i thought psa pain was worse with inactivity ?

[Deleted User]

Hi everydaynormalguy,welcome to the forum,so sorry you are in a lot of pain with joints and inflammation,I don't have PsA but have Osteoarthritis so can understand what you are going through ,there are others with PsA on the forum so I am sure they will contact you when they see your post to talk about their symptoms. Everyone on the forum understands about pain and arthritis everyone has various forms of Arthritis we are also very friendly and sympathetic. The most popular forums are Living with Arthritis and Chit Chat.
All the best Christine

stickywicket

Hi and welcome from me too. I have longstanding RA (Rheumatoid Arthritis). Not quite the same as PsA but near enough. They're both autoimmune and the meds are the same.

I can understand your confusion about what helps and what doesn't. Autoimmune arthritises tend to do their own thing until / unless controlled to some extent by DMARDS (Disease Modifying Anti-Rheumatic Drugs). They will flare when they feel like it and sometimes we feel we've done nothing to warrant a flare though stress can be a cause and smoking can make it worse.

I was always taught by physios to do only Range of Movement (ROM) exercises when flaring and to do strengthening ones when not.So I guess what you're doing could be making things worse. It's a bit of a minefield.

When do you see the rheumatologist again and has he suggested treatment? If you have a long wait and things are tough your GP could prescribe some anti-inflammatories to tide you over. They won't deter the disease but should ease some inflammation and so result in less pain. As you don't have a clear cut diagnosis yet, though, he might prefer not to prescribe them as they can cloud the issue a bit. (Welcome to the brave new world of autoimmune arthritis :roll: )

One problem with PsA is that it's one of the sero-negative types of arthritis so the routine blood tests that GPs conduct can give the impression that all is well. The rheumatologists have other tools at their disposal though.

I hope you can get on DMARDS soon. Please let us know how you get on.