After 6 long months of agonizing painful days and nights.

Pippasquirt1

Im 51 years old, been healthy all my life until one day. After having chronic knee swelling, pain and stiffness for 6 months, all the time it felt like my leg was made of a metal pipe that was bend where the knee should be and i could not straighten it between 30 minutes to hour, especially in the morning's and on sitting down during the day/night. Walking my back was bent forward because of that and also trying to ease the pain around my knee.

I was diagnosed 1 month ago, the rheumatologist thinks it's seronegative inflammatory rheumatoid arthritis in knee, both wrist and knuckles as yes, they are playing up recently.

Also diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis in finger on the same day.

Been on so many different NSAIDs and a few times on steroids tablets, nothing would take swelling down, ease the pain or stiffness only the steroids would take the pain away, before seeing rheumatologist after 6 long amonths of gonizing painful days and nights.

Rheumatologist give me knee steroid injection therapy, plus steroid tablets for a month reducing the dose each week, plus 15mg Methotrexate tablets. Swelling went down completely in knee a few days after seeing rheumatologist, so pain and stiffness went, but after 2 week pain and limping only is creeping back and lasting longer each time it goes away. It all started with pain, limping for about a month then the swelling happened also, that lasted for 6 month.

I will be talking about my medications in a different post.

It's taken me a while to come on here because i knew all you people have problems yourself and reading up, i need to talk to others instead of my husband who is against taking any medication even for his own arthritis, just deal with it he says, don't know his problem, i just tell him, he deal with his and i will take what the rheumatologist gives me.

Anna

Hi @Pippasquirt1 and welcome to the online community,

You have recently been diagnosed with seronegative inflammatory arthritis in your knee and psoriatic arthritis in your finger. Your rheumatologist has prescribed various medications which seem to have helped for a while but now the pain is beginning to creep back. It can be quite a shock to deal with a new diagnosis as you are doing, but you've made a good move by joining the community. Everyone on here has experienced living with arthritis and will understand at least some of what you're going through. This is the right place to share your ups and downs - everyone here is friendly and supportive.

I'm sure other members will want to welcome you, but meanwhile, you might be interested to read a special page published by Versus Arthritis for people who have been newly diagnosed.

https://www.versusarthritis.org/about-arthritis/newly-diagnosed/

Best wishes, and do keep posting.

Anna (Mod)

Pippasquirt1

This is my left knee before i saw the rheumatologist, i could not straighten my knee for 6 month.

stickywicket

Welcome to the not-so-wonderful world of inflammatory arthritis! PsA is sero-negative as is, obviously, sero-neg RA. These are harder to diagnose than sero-positive types. Meanwhile we just have to soldier on. NSAIDS will not do much and certainly won't hold back the disease as DMARDS do. Steroids are usually helpful but not a long term solution.

As far as swelling and inflammation go - yes, that's normal. I think Dreamdaisy probably holds the record on here for fattest knee. She was finally diagnosed by a sports physio PsA).

Once you get properly established on the right med (It's a bit trial and error and they can all take up to three months to work) things will improve. I don't know what type of arthritis your husband has. if it's OA then medication is a choice. If it's an inflammatory form, like yours, he'd be crazy to ignore the meds. We have overactive immune systems which are attacking our own bodies. If they are not damped down they will continue to do so more and more. We deal with it by taking the DMARDS.

Pippasquirt1

• It is overwhelming with the symptoms and chronic fatigue, needing to have sleeps during the day, reading up about diagnosis at the moment, what can happen, it gets a bit much and it hurts mentally.
• I don't know if this is a flare up starting again and the fatigue as come back again, because i was in agony for 6 month, methotrexate tablets and knee injection on same day. Everything went back to normal for about 2 weeks, but pain, limping and fatigue is coming back slowly, fatigue and sleep as been happening for the past 5 days now.