A Young Wife’s Tale

Oh, how far we’ve come in our journey with Psoriatic Arthritis. Remember the awful rheumatologist in New Jersey who wanted to take David off the Humira? He didn’t believe David had psoriatic arthritis. David had a great visit with his old Dallas rheumatologist last week. David and I told the doctor how well David has [...]

Some of the simplest remedies that help him are things like over the counter heat patches, heating pads, and hot baths with epsom salts. Another thing that has helped David is chiropractic care.

I’ve blogged before about the Back 2 Life Machine. It was very helpful when he was flaring so badly the muscles in his back would spasm. You could actually see the muscles in his lower back twitching. The Back 2 Life Machine helped stretch David’s lower back very gently.

At different times David’s rheumatologists have given him injections in his back of things like methotrexate and cortisone. They typically only offered mild relief.
Doctors have prescribed many different medications to help David with his pain. Some of the medications that have given David significant relief are hydrocodone, Lyrica, Flexeril and Cymbalta. There was only one time when David asked a doctor for pain medication, and the doctor didn’t want to (but he’s the horrible rheumatologist who didn’t think David had Psoriatic Arthritis). I convinced him to give David the medicine, and we found a new rheumy ASAP.

This was originally posted on April 25, 2009. It was the second blog post I wrote. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come. And to know David’s arthritis could be this bad again.

My husband, David has Psoriatic Arthritis. He was diagnosed a year ago, at age 23. He’s only ever had mild psoriasis on his scalp. We actually didn’t know it was psoriasis until the rheumatologist told us. David has a family history of rheumatoid arthritis, so we were relieved to know he does not have the rheumatoid factor, although I recently learned that it could develop into rheumatoid arthritis.

As I wrote in my previous post, I have been diagnosed with Interstitial Cystitis. The urologist prescribed two different medications for me to try. One was Sanctura, and after less than a week of taking it, I know it isn’t right for me. The urologist mentioned it could cause some digestive problems, and sure enough [...]

I recently wrote about having chronic urinary tract infection here. After lots of testing, the urologist ruled out everything else and diagnosed me with interstitial cystitis. I had several urinary tract infections in 2010 which were confirmed by LabCorp. Now I still feel like I have a UTI, but I don’t. I have interstitial cystitis.