[Closed] Arthritis advice

Have you had a diagnosis as to what type you have?

Not yet as ive only just realised whats going on. But following a bit of internet research, as its uniform across all joints in both hands, then i suspect its rheumatoid arthritis. But thats not confirmed by a doctor yet.

I would bet it's not arthritis, could be tight wrist/hand muscles.

Try some stretches and strengthening exercises which will show improvements pretty quickly.

Can you make a tight fist without pain?

Even if it is arthritis the above still stands.

Can you make a tight fist without pain?

Yes. Its uncomfortable but it feels like a deep stretch rather than pain.

I had a similar thing myself struggled to make a fist and generally becoming much stiffer/less mobile.

I took myself to the gym and worked on a strength and mobility program which has worked wonders, i'm 55.

So you haven't got arthritis. You have assumed you have got arthritis. Before asking STW what to do, I'd suggest you see your doctor and ask for their diagnosis.

IMO

So you haven’t got arthritis. You have assumed you have got arthritis. Before asking STW what to do, I’d suggest you see your doctor and ask for their diagnosis.

What overly aggressive keyboard warrior world do you live in then?

As has been said, you really need a proper diagnosis. There is often a waiting list to see a rheumatologist (three months in my case) so I'd get to the GP asap. Having said that, I'm not sure it sounds like RA. RA is crippling and you simply can't move your joints. Could be that it is at an early stage of course. It more often affects women rather than men and in your mid 30s. If it is, loads of things you can do to help. RA medication was really effective but ultimately it came down to changing my mindset and lifestyle to get it under control.

As for osteoarthritis, my dog has just had great results with stem cell therapy so that could be an option.

In short, if properly managed and treated, it shouldn't stop you doing most things. GP is your first port of call though.

Yep agreed. Its crept up over the past few weeks and it was only after a bit of research yesterday that i thought that was what it was ( I still think it might be). I'm off to the docs next week to discuss properly, but obviously a bit worried about what could be around the corner.

I have AS - a form of RA.  Hands being painful were one of many early signs but they got worse over time rather than instant hit of pain.  Started in the hip for me (the joint I can never spell!).  Meds do work and once you are in the system (if indeed you ever need to be) I have found the NHS to be very helpful (far from perfect on the admin side but the medical staff are v good).

I rarely have a pain free day but its so well managed that it has no significant impact on daily life.  I've even reduced the level of meds over time.

Good that you are seeing the doc as the sooner you get diagnosed the earlier the management begins.

hot water cold water hot water cold water repeat repeat repeat .................. for 10 minutes

by far the best help yourself treatment for arthritis.

I am a veteran. new hip and new ankle so far.

What overly aggressive keyboard warrior world do you live in then?

The one where asking questions about assumed medical conditions is seen as being pointless before proper diagnosis it seems.

johndoh - what is your expertise to give such a solid diagnosis?

for what its worth I have arthritis in my hands and can make a fist easily.  Arthritis justmeans inflamed joints.  thats what the word means

Whatever it is, if it's inflation based, do some research or turmeric with black pepper. Helped our dog no end with both arthritis and a tumour.

It seems to be a bit of a wonder remedy.

Any experiences you lot have with this? Does it stop you doing anything?

With rheumatoid arthritis this as a 'how long is a piece of string?' question

Here are a couple of lengths for example:

A. It will visit you for a while and make a few joints stiff and swollen, possibly painful. With conservative treatment (or even no treatment) will go away and stay dormant, not to bother you again.

B. It will come like a thief in the night. It strikes people of any age. You'll notice ('hot') pain in some joints. Maybe your fingers, shoulders, elbows, feet. Maybe you'll get some spinal/neck pain or maybe it will feel like all of your joints are affected. Bilateral joints such as your feet will being to feel like breaking/broken things on fire. Weird clicks, crepitus and sticky joint-sheaths are the norm. Hot, unrecognisably swollen and locked-up joints is the icing on the top. You will feel like you have been set about by the blunt end of a hammer and left for dead. Every day.

This is your immune system attacking your joints and ultimately destroying them. The pain is indescribable and maddening. It keeps you away night and day. You'll 'sleep' (clock-watch) alone for as long as it takes to get this under some kind of control. Most often you'll stay awake in the wheelchair as even the pressure of the bed-sheets feels like fiery blows. How the **** is that even possible? No-one will really believe that. In hindsight you'll realise that (ironically) that surviving this, at your strongest, as your life collapses around you and you still fight back - you will still be judged somehow as 'weak'. 'Arthritis', in common parlance, is up there with ME. ie the perception that arthritis is a vaguely phantom complaint for attention-seekers who have 'a bit of an ache'

Living alone will compound this. You'll be viewed as 'eccentric' and possibly mad. Maybe you will start believing that you are indeed, now, becoming unhinged. How much sleep-deprivation does it take? You almost accidentally start drinking alcohol to help yourself sleep. This can't happen. You stop. You become depressed. You get a GP referral to a psychologist. You get a very good psychologist who talks through the whole history. She's talking to you like a an equal human. You feel normal. You are signed off without the need for further meds. 'Reactive depression'. 'You're really doing very well, I take my hat off to you'. Someone understands!  A huge boost.  A key in a lock to open the next door.

You've been in hospital for a week and seen 10 yr old kids with juvenile arthritis, heard them crying all night long with the crazy pain. You  meet a 27 year old man, three years younger than you yet his knees completely destroyed by the disease, his face ballooned by the steroids. His body now a giant useless lump of fat slumped in a custom-width wheelchair. He smokes outside of the hospital every 15 minutes. We sit side by side in our wheelchairs and talk about what we used to do in life. We laugh and smoke cigarettes together. It feels normal for a moment to laugh and smoke.

Every day we find a spot beneath some beech trees, luckily accessible by a tarmac path. We go there to be away from the nurses, visitors  and sounds of the wards, just to chat, laugh and have a cigarette without being judged for either. Upon discharge you guiltily hope you'll never see him again. We both have that far away/detached look that you soon learn to recognise in long-term pain-sufferers.  Like some weird reflection, a secret code.

You don't wish to be reminded of the disease. You don't wish to be back in hospital, you are going to change the course of things and not be around people with arthritis. Self-loathing looms again. Are they quitters or warriors? Have they quit on life, just given up? Or is there really no cure?  You struggle with this some more.

Back home. Back to your own status. The only useful range of motion now possible is via a course of hydrotherapy. If you're wealthy enough for private (or lucky enough to get NHS prescription for it in your area) then the hydro team will lower you (via a crane/sling) into the pool and help you try and maintain some workable degree of flexion in the joints and relax your taught muscles. You realise that you are quite literally and metaphorically a balled-up knot of a thing.

You will feel some minor relief before being hoisted and driven back to your chair. Crutches may be helpful while getting to the toilet. If your feet are very badly affected then crawling is preferable, depending upon the severity or effect on the knee joints.

You'll be offered injections of steroids into your joints, and /or anti-inflammatory and disease-modifying drugs such as Methotrexate or Sulphasalazine to try and slow down the progression and lessen the severity of the disease. The latter smells like a petro-chemical and is hepatoxic. Your piss is fluorescening yellow on this. If you take it you'll have to have blood tests every two weeks to check for liver damage. Decisions, decisions. You're really up against it and desperate.

Your employer let you go after 6 patient months of waiting. You'll cancel your final three driving lessons as the test is not going to happen if you cannot even bear the weight of a shoe on you locked-up foot, still less press a pedal. You want to punch everything. That night, 2am, half-mad from lack of sleep and flaring pain, you crawl from the sofa bed to the bathroom. You look for something to break. You lie on your back and beat at your feet and legs with a packaged shower rail that you should have fitted four months back. Spend the remaining three hours of the night both sobbing and self-loathing for having sobbed.

You'll get a letter reminding you to either pay for or cancel that MIAS course for MTB leadership that you enrolled on. Your bike is currently as useless to you, as is your marital bed. You are useless. You cancel. You feel cancelled.

You gave up your band as the last gig you played with them was performed on crutches, replete with bum-notes caused from the distractions afforded by acute pain.

The NHS waiting game. Months disappear. Tomb Raider on the PS2 probably saves your life.

Doctors helpfully offer joint-fusion (arthrodesis) as some permanent relief from a degree of pain. They cannot guarantee you will walk again as it is progressing. Joint fusion may help you walk a short distance, it may not. It's like Meccano for bone. Your feet are already unrecognisable and the toes are curling off to the outer-edge of your foot. Maybe immobilising some toe-joints will also straighten them some. The doctor asks you to look over at a chart on the wall. You realise that you can hardly move your neck.

Your dentist takes an impression and fits a 'night'-guard for you to bite on as you are in involuntarily and literally grinding your teeth down with chronic pain.

Your friends will visit and help by watching the odd movie with you, or taking you for a drive. But the invitations and visits naturally diminish over time. You are increasingly cranky and tired, or wired and unpredictable. You can sound bitter and obsessed. It's not their fault. It's not your fault.

During 'flare-ups' (periods of increased disease activity) an extreme, constant pain will rule your life. These flare-ups can last days or months at at time. It is distracting in the extreme. Indescribably so. Worse still, as a by-product of it you'll be spending time alone to the point where you identify with the pain because there is ****-all else that 'understands' what you are going through.

You stop looking in the mirror, even to clean teeth. Dont like what yiu see.  Your eyes look weird. Not 'you'. Skin looks like shit with a flaky, red rash. And these odd 'blisters' are appearing on your legs that seem to be full of water. Like little sacs about the size of a kidney bean. You realise three years has gone by. And you have had no employment. And now you 'live' alone and piss in a special wide-knecked bottle. You crawl to the toilet to shit. You need help from a social worker and the CAB because you are struggling to fill in the disability benefit forms that seem designed to exclude everything and everyone. You will have to appeal. You feel useless. Leprous, even. But at least the pain keeps you alive. Keeps you awake.

During flare-up the intense abstract mental energy required to somehow 'swallow' the pain can curiously, function as a focus. If you are lucky you can still use your hands. This will allow you (from a reclined/seated position) to access a computer. Then you can order food and stuff online, research the disease independently, and make some plans of your own.

Living alone now reveals unforeseen benefits as you can take the relatively glacial time periods required to make small improvements in your range of motion via almost imperceptible daily increments. You also have no social or work schedule to speak of  so you can experiment with elimination diets and natural therapies (Epsom salt baths, contrast baths, gentle stretches). These foods and bathing schedule are rigid and imperative. Your work is to beat the flare-ups. To reclaim and restore as much of your mobility as possible. Better still, 'force' it into remission before the drugs/steroids/approaching arthrodesis/athroplasty get you first.

You just learned that the drug 'Vioxx' has been taken off the market as it seemed to be giving heart attacks to men of your age . You look at the as-yet unopened prescriptions of Vioxx on your shelf and breathe a sigh of relief. Onwards and sideways...focus on upwards even when you're appearing to be travelling backwards.  Your life changed completely in no time at all*

****

As I say, piece of string. I gave you a long one and a short one.  Wear and tear (osteo arthritis) and RA (systemic) are fundamentally different pieces of string.  There are much longer ones and countless in-between. Best to get checked out by a specialist before jumping to conclusions. IANAD etc.

'Contrast baths' for your hands is very good advice right now. But act quickly with a diagnosis, highe chance you'll find it's probably simple and temporary.

* 20 year anniversary catartic outpouring is written by a man who is now mountain biking again 👍🏼🤘🏻🚴🏻

Jeepers Malvern!  I hope you feel better for that!
I have seen pretty much exactly that in my professional capacity.  Puts my my mild osteo in my hands and feet into perspective.  I ave a constant background pain in the 1 or 2 ( out of ten scale) with the odd flare up to 4.  Living with severe RA is a whole different beast.

The ankle surgeon at the Oswestry hospital - Europe's centre of excellence for orthopaedics - told me to try high dose Chondroitin and Glucosamine tablets for 3 months.  If I felt they were doing me good, carry on.  If I didn't think so, stop.  He says there's no firm evidence  but he knows some of his patients benefit from them.

I have osteoarthritis in my left knee, X-ray confirmation, after banging it hard on the ground when my bike went sideways. My hands get a bit achy at times, and my late mum had arthritis, so I wouldn’t be too surprised if I haven’t inherited it. I just take a couple of ibuprofen when it gets a bit painful, and get on with my day. I have a prescription for Zapain (codein/paracetamol) which I take if things get a bit more uncomfortable, but ibuprofen is usually all I need.

I have very active job, I can walk up to five miles a day, and I’m climbing in and out of cars constantly, so I need to keep active. I’m now 64, fwiw.

Check your diet, regardless if you do have arthritis or not try to cut back on inflammatory foods (sugars, processed meats, refined carbs, booze etc).

Most doctors aren't dieticians so usually medicine get prescribed (which is understandable as that is what they are trained in!)

johndoh – what is your expertise to give such a solid diagnosis

Errr.... I gave no diagnosis, I suggested the OP should get one.