Those of you who have visited these pages before will know that I suffer from psoriatic arthritis, a variation of arthritis that often tends to affect fingers/hands the worst, and is associated with, although the links aren't entirely clear (other than it's tied to your immune system) the skin disease psoriasis.
I last posted about this in October when I recounted a recent flare up in my left index finger which was treated very successfully with a steroid injection.
However....
Shortly after this (certainly within a couple of weeks), whilst that finger following that treatment was and still is fine, the same pain and swelling materialised in the left middle finger. It's like, "oh that one's all right, let's move on to the next one..."
Up until Christmas, the soreness and discomfort it has s been fairly intermittent but since then, and particularly in the last couple of weeks, it's become worse. It's surprising how even the simplest of tasks with that hand requires some finger movement which can lead an excruciating bolt of pain on an already chronically sore joint. I contacted the Rheumatology team a month or so ago to enquire whether they could see me and do anything about it, but the only date they could offer in the ensuing 6-8 weeks I was unavailable. As I had a scheduled telephone consultation on 21st Feb I decided to leave it, and have been taking both ibuprofen and paracetamol meantime to try and keep the soreness under some sort of control.
So yesterday my consultant rang me as scheduled and I updated him. He wasn't keen to try another steroid injection as it's essentially a short term solution, and suggested that I increase my weekly methotrexate dose slightly as it was more appropriate for longer term control (there's no cure by the way). I wasn't keen on this for reasons that are evident in my previous post, but I grudgingly accepted that this was probably the better option. To be fair, he did say he'd book and injection clinic appointment and if it hadn't settled, then we could try the jab. Having only that day taken my methotrexate, I took another tablet to top up the dose to what he'd suggested. It'll probably take a couple of weeks for the higher dose to take effect, so meantime I went off to Boots to add some freeze spray and Deep Heat spray to my "managing pain" armoury, supplementing the ibuprofen and paracetamol (plus the methotrexate and the folic acid I have to take because I'm on methotrexate).
Oh, and I'm going to need another blood test to check the extra dose isn't nerfing my liver.
It's a pain, physically and metaphorically.
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