Recently diagnosed with reactive arthritis

Hi all,

I would just like introduce myself and hopefully we can share our experiences and tips with each other. My name is Yael, 31 y old and I live in The Netherlands.

Last week I've been diagnosed with reactive arthritis. I had never heard about this illness before. 3 weeks ago I was on a holiday in India and unfortunately got gastroenteritis because of a bacteria… which eventually led to reactive arthritis.

It started with a bit of pain on the back of my right knee in the evening, I thought that I just sat in a wrong position. Unfortunately my knee got so swollen in the next 2 days that I couldn't walk anymore, couldn't bend my knee and couldn't even lift my leg anymore ..

Besides that I also got an inflammation on the top of my left foot and after a few days got inflammations on my handpalms.

It took the doctors in the hospital a while to diagnose me with this illness, I think it's not that common in The Netherlands. After a week of pain they took 100 cc of fluid out of my knee, which was a big relief and took away the worst pain.

I am back home, 24/7 on the sofa as I can't do anything without pain .. I am just wondering if I should expect any other inflammations to pop up in my body? Or can it worsen again? Since 2 days I started to get a back pain as well. And 3 days before the pain in the knee started I had very sharp pains in my left chest, which apparently can also be linked to reactive arthritis.

If any of you also has or had reactive arthritis, how long did it take you to recover? Do you have any tips how to move on? After how many weeks/months did you start working again?

I hope to hear from you! <3