Hello!

Penpip

Hi I’m new to this site, and hoping to understand my conditions more by being on this site. I’m being treated with methotrexate and I’m being upped after already being upped once. I’m on 20mg at the moment. I have osteoarthritis and inflammatory arthritis disease. I need to new knees as the arthritis has been eating away at my soft tissues. My right wrist has damage in the joint also due to the arthritis. So it’s under autoimmune disease. I also have osteoarthritis secondary to the other arthritis. I have this in my shoulders spine and other places I guess. I also have stenosis both in the lumber back and I have some form of change in the cervical neck area. Not sure which is the problem there stenosis or arthritis. So I’m 51. I’ve not worked for nearly five years. I have been a hairdresser since leaving school at 15.

I wonder how people manage to work with these issues and if you do what type of work do you do. And for those who don’t work what hobbies do you have to help pass the time.

I receive pip but only the middle for care and a blue badge. I’m not sure if I can claim full mobility. I know I can’t walk far.

anyway it will be nice to speak with people who have the same issues. I have two dogs and try to walk them each day but I can only manage about 20 mins max I’ve only known for four months about the inflammatory arthritis.. I’m not sure if I can get back to work I would like to, but not sure what I would be able to do I’ve recently had surgery 7weeks ago in my back for stenosis which involved a decompression at the L4/5 I’m recovering well… but term I'm not sure how things will go

Thanks for reading my long post

Pen

SharminB

Hi @Penpip,

Welcome and thank you for joining our forum 😊

Thank you for sharing here with us. Sorry to hear what you've experienced, but glad to hear that you're still trying to keep moving. I wonder if you've been able to get support from an occupational therapist before or currently. 'Occupational therapy aims to help you to manage your work, home and leisure activities if you have a condition that makes those activities difficult.' I've linked some information below that I hope you'll find helpful.

You can also use our 'Living with arthritis' forum to speak to others too.

https://www.versusarthritis.org/about-arthritis/treatments/therapies/occupational-therapy/

https://community.versusarthritis.org/categories/living-with-arthritis-forum

Let us know how you get on 😊

Best wishes,

Sharmin - Mod

Penpip

Thank you Sharmin. 😊