Re: new person

[Guest guest]

Hi, Ru. My wife was also an OB nurse but she quit when our first child was born over 50 years ago. She and I have been learning about RA together. There are 7 criteria for diagnosing RA from the American College of Rheumatology and only one of them is based on blood work. Only 4 are required for an RA diagnosis but from what I hear some other types of arthritis like Psoriatic Arthritis and Lupus can also have the symptoms of RA. Diagnoses are often tentative and subject to change. http://www.arthritisinsight.com/medical/disease/ra/ra.html Also about a fourth of the people with RA do not have positive blood work and about a fourth of the people with positive blood work do not have RA.

With your description of your symptoms and a tentative diagnosis of RA I'm surprised that your doctor didn't give you Prednisone. That has some diagnostic value because it is a strong anti-inflammatory that usually alleviates the symptoms of RA rather rapidly. However, it does not slow down or stop the permanent joint damage that comes from RA (and Celebrex also doesn't stop the damage). If you have RA you need to be on a DMARD. http://www.arthritisinsight.com/medical/meds/

You don't say what kind of doctor you are seeing but it should be a rheumatologist. If you have RA you need early and aggressive treatment to try to avoid permanent joint damage.

By the way, welcome to the message board and condolences on your need for being here. Please feel free to post any questions or concerns and someone is likely to respond. If you prefer you could e-mail me at hvantuyl@... but make sure to identify RA in the subject line so it doesn't get treated as spam. Good luck and God bless.

----- Original Message -----

From: Ruth

Rheumatoid Arthritis

Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2003 4:18 AM

Subject: new person

Hi All,

I am Ru, and new to the list.

I have just been dx'd last Tuesday with RA, though the bloodwork is not yet back. Is that possible? I have osteo in my right knee, and the joint problems I have now originated in my legs with the first set of painful days, The second time it happened it was ankles, knees, my back, but really bad in my shoulders and neck and elbows. Now this last time--the one that initiated the trip to the doc, was all the above and then my hand/wrists and fingers---so bad I could not write or type, both of which I need to do for work. I couldn't turn my head to drive, it was too stiff and painful.

At my docs he gave me celebrex and took blood, and said he would call when the results were back in, but that is sounded like I had RA. Sounded like? Is this blood test definitive?

Ok, far the really weird part, I know I should know all this, I am an RN, LOL. But I have spent all my time either in telemetry or OB, and the last year and a half in public health, doing OB. So I am researching this online.

Any thoughts or ideas that maybe this isn't RA and could be something else?

Thanks,

Ru

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[Guest guest]

Harold,

thanks for the reply. My lab work came back elevated, except got the anti nuclear antibodies.

I have an appt to see a rheumatologist on sept 12. My PCP did say he wasn't diagnosing me with "rheumatoid arthritis", but I did have an inflammatory disease process going on, and he was going to let the RA doc do further testing and make a dx from that.

Thanks for the link to the web site, it looks very interesting

Ru

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