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Originally Posted by amber
perhaps wear one of those white face masks? How does someone get such severe arthritis at such an early age? Is there any way i can avoid something like that?
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You can get arthritis at any age. A friend of mine has a sister who was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 3! They think that what I have-psoriatic arthritis-may be inherited. There's a strong suggestion that it was in my case--my grandfather had it, my father has it, my half-brother has it too. I was diagnosed at 29.
It's a "cousin" so to speak of rheumatoid arthritis. My thumb and index finger were the first joints to be attacked--I first thought I'd sprained my finger or something. From there it went to my wrists, my neck, my hips, my ankles, knees, and my lower back. You can develop skin lesions with it too, but so far, other than a few dry, scaly patches, I've been very, very lucky in that regard.
The fatigue is the worst thing though. I went from being someone who had tons of energy to someone who just wanted to sleep all the time, but at the same time, I'd suffer from horrible insomnia.
I went into one pretty long remission there for about 3 years before it came back again-this time with a vengeance. Nothing worked-not vioxx, not celebrex, not even methotrexate which is as nasty drug as you'd ever hope not to be on. That one was originally a chemotheraphy drug which they found would work on certain forms of arthritis but causes the same horrible side effects most people taking chemo have (at least you only take it 2 days a week but it ruined every weekend for over 3 years). And when that stopped working, my drug of last resort was Enbrel. And it's a miracle drug. After 90 days on it, my arthritis blood tests were normal for the first time in over 3 years.
I work at home, so that gives me a good degree of protection from the public at large. And from now until spring, I'm going to try to do my shopping at non-peak hours/days and I'm taking my vitamins, drinking lots of water, and trying to get lots of rest--they say that's what you need to do if you have an immune system disorder anyway, so these were things I was already doing. And I'm going to try to avoid flying for business if I possibly can, since an airplane is basically a flying petri dish. Luckily, the winter is a "slow" season for my business so I should be able to avoid airplanes for awhile.