I made a post a while back about starting Humira. It did wonders for my skin and I couldn't have been happier in that respect. However, after some time I started to notice some odd swelling in digits and joints and it began to escalate into full blown level 10 pain. I suspected that it was the Psoriatic Arthritis that I hadn't been officially diagnosed with, but knew I had. At Kaiser, I had been told to take naproxen and sent on my way. Unfortunately, the naproxen did nothing to help - nor did any other OTC pain medicine.
Eventually, it got so bad that I would get home at the end of the day and I would have to crawl and scoot from the door to my bedroom. The pain radiated from my joints into tendons and muscles. There wasn't a joint on my body that didn't suffer at some point. It was horrifying but I kept up hope that it was going to just go away - but it slowly started to become my life. I wasn't able to ride my horse, hike with my dog, and some days I couldn't even get out of bed.
With the help of a veteran, I was able to find a physician who would accept Tricare. I had to make an appointment with a primary care doctor at OHSU which was a month out. After seeing her and getting the referral to a rheumatologist, I had to wait another month for an appointment. I started to get worried that by the time I was seen there was going to be irreparable damage - or, more melodramatically (but not really, because if you could feel the pain, you'd understand), that I was going to wither up and die.
After my experience at Kaiser, I was anxious that the OHSU rheumatologist was either going to be a resident or not know how to help me. Boy, was I ever wrong. When I went in for my appointment, I met the most compassionate, empathetic, attentive doctor. She listened closely to my issues and then looked at the areas of my body that were hurting. She ordered lab work, x rays, and prescribed a few things she thought might help. We decided on a course of treatment.
She recommended Simponi (golimumab). Another biologic TNF-blocker, but more potent than the Humira and only once monthly. Still a self-injector pen, it is much more user friendly and the serum doesn't burn like acid. While on it, I need to be careful about my environment and go so far as to avoid people who have received live vaccines or have strep throat. In addition to the Simponi, we are trying a low dose of Methotrexate again. Not my favorite medication and it hadn't done anything positive while I was on it the first time, but I am willing to give it a try if it helps get the inflammation under control.
It has now been about four days since starting the Simponi and the inflammation has gone down and there is a lot less pain in my feet and fingers. There is still some stiffness, but I'm hoping that will alleviate as well. If it stops working sometime during the month or anything gets worse, we have other options we'll try - but for now I'm enjoying just being able to move around at a relatively normal pace.
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| From the Simponi website |
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