Any tips or tricks ?

Viennaesi

Hi there

I’m 18 and recently diagnosed with inflammatory arthritis affecting my fingers ankles knees and wrists. i’m new to all of this so wondered if anyone had any tips or tricks to make things easier on the day to day?

also if anyone is roughly the same age and wants a chat im more than happy to:)

jamieA

Hi @Viennaesi

I'm a lot older than you - I'm 67 - so I don't know how much I'd offer that's relevant.

The first thing I'd say is to push to get a drugs treatment that works for you as quickly as possible. Hopefully you've got medics that are focussed on your welfare but if not you'll need try to make them do so. I had a consultation with a rheumatologist last week who was very good at explaining things and very understanding - that's not always been the case. She said that there's a school of thought that the rapid escalation of my psoriatic arthritis and the rapid - by their standards - move to a biologic drug that worked means my joints look like they've not been as badly damaged by the disease as would otherwise have been the case. So the earlier the treatment the better the outcome as far as she was concerned.

It's been repeatedly stressed to me the need to keep my joints moving. I've had a couple of 12 week NHS physio courses which have helped and I'm currently half way through a Nuffield Health Joint Pain course which is free of charge.

https://community.versusarthritis.org/discussion/59096/nuffield-health-joint-pain-wellbeing-programme

For self help - for my hands and wrists I find compression gloves help. For my knees I wear an elasticated knee support on the worst affected left knee and a tubigrip on my right. On my ankle I wear a compression sock that's actually advertised for plantar fasciitis. I also use capsaicin cream which is prescription only - though I wouldn't put it on my hands as it's got chilli extract in it and I've been prescribed lidocaine patches for when joints get sore.

I hope you get stabilised as quickly as possible.