New diagnosis

Skinny Keef

I’m not new here, but I have in the last few days been diagnosed with inflammatory arthritis to add to my existing osteoarthritis.

i had noticed new pain that my current medication wasn’t touching and the pain was in connective tissues rather than a joint.

i would like to know if bouncing along in my wheelchair would be the kind of activity that would cause a flare up of inflammation and pain please. It seems to be very much the case for me. I rolled down to the park with my little boy and once home my new pain areas were incredibly painful and i felt exhausted. Is this reasonable to expect?

i am so use to dealing with my osteoarthritis but this new one has really knocked the stuffing out of me and any advice or shared experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Keef.

stickywicket

There are / have been a few of us on here who have 'done the double'. Usually, it's people like me whose inflammatory arthritis gobbled up their synoial fluid thus giving OA a free rein. However, one or two have gone the other way.

I'm lucky in that my RA is now under good control so pain normally comes from the OA when I've overdone things. We used to go on 'wheelchair walk' in the country where i rode a bit and walked a bit. Some of the tracks could be pretty stony and bumpy but I don't recall ever feeling much worse for riding them. If I had, I think I'd have blamed the OA. The RA was always annoyingly random.

Sorry I can't be much use. Hopefully, once you're established on some DMARDS, things will improve. Mind you, pain is pain is pain and i'd have expected your pain relief to do something. It won't, unlike DMARDS, hold back the progresss of the disease but ought to help a bit. How long to the DMARDS?

Skinny Keef

I don’t know. It was only because I had pain in my pelvis, that was new, and not on a joint and wasn’t controlled by tramadol that i started investigating.

apparently it’s pelvic enthetitis (spelling) which is what I suspected and doc confirmed. Awaiting bt results to confirm inflammation markers but doc was pretty sure. However i have the same pain in my shoulders, elbows and heels and I feel absolutely wiped out and everytime i take tram i lay down and inevitably sleep for 90 minutes which is helping.

i hope the bt comes back positive because that will at least explain what is going on. I got chatting to some other sufferers in town who were saying that inflammation doesn’t always show up in bt.

thanks for the post stickywicket.

stickywicket

I'm pretty sure I don't have enthesitis. I think it's associated more with AS and PsA than RA. I did a search, though, and here are some old threads on it which might be useful. https://community.versusarthritis.org/search?domain=all_content&query=enthesitis&scope=site&source=community . i see @jamieA has contributed to one. He might be helpful. He usually is.

jamieA

Hi @Keef

I was diagnosed with PsA in October 2020 and the medics added enthesitis in February 2022. The places enthesitis affects me most is my heels and underfoot, my right elbow and my right wrist. I was treated for plantar fasciitis the year before my PsA diagnosis and the rheumatologist said enthesitis in that area can often be mistaken for plantar fasciitis. Similarly she said the enthesitis in the elbow can often be mistaken for tennis elbow. I was given an MRI scan of my lower back early in my PsA diagnosis and was told that was to look at the state of my sacroiliac joints - the joints between the base of your spine and your pelvis - as these are affected by PsA and AS. My right sacroiliac joint gives me the most issues and I get a pain in the lower right just below my belt line. I was prescribed lidocaine patches which I find help when it starts getting too sore.

My rheumatology nurse uses an ultrasound scanner to detect inflammation.

Like @stickywicket I've gone from inflammatory arthritis to OA in a number of joints - or as rheumatology call it 'mechanical' and have passed me on to orthopedics for my hands and knees.

I hope you get some treatment that works for you soon.

Skinny Keef

Thanks to you both.

my fear is that i now have AS as i fit the profile really well. History of inflammatory bowl problems and a very stressy person. The enthesitis is a major symptom of AS and I was told by my doc that riding the motorcycle was bad for someone with AS as it would cause more damage.

my blood tests results are back but The receptionist won’t tell me what they are because the doc hasn’t seen them yet and i know from experience this means they are abnormal. I think the receptionists are allowed to pass on results that are normal as they have to me in the past so I have to wait until tomorrow.

i have had a chest infection for the last 2 weeks as well am now wondering if that is due to inflammation. It’s all come in so quickly and i am SO tired all the time and at night the pain wakes me after a couple of hours sleep. I hope they can prescribe something decent tomorrow that sorts me out lol.

jamieA

Hi @Keef

Funnily enough I had had a series of chest infections in the 6 months before I was diagnosed with PsA. Three weeks after my PsA diagnosis my chest infection morphed into pneumonia. I was put on steroids - prednisilone - and that helped both my PsA and pneumonia. When the pneumonia was eventually sorted out the medics gave me Kenalog steroid injections to help with my joint pain whilst they worked at getting a drug regime that contained my PsA. It might be worth asking your GP about a course of steroids.

Skinny Keef

Interesting. Thanks Jamie.

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