R/A (In need of support)

[Guest guest]

Hi all, My name is Florence. I have been " lurking " as I have seen

you all call it for a couple of days and thought I would throw my

hat into the ring. I am 44 years old and single. I was diagnosed

with R/A in 1987.

I too had been through a great deal of stress prior to R/A. When I

was about 27 my mom died of cancer, I was her care giver. Shortly

there after my father had a major heart attack and had triple bypass

surgery, I was also his care giver. Within about the next six

months I started experiencing R/A symptoms. We know stress does not

cause R/A, but it surely is one of the many triggers that awakens

those dormant cells.

I have been on just about all combinations of the R/A meds.

Starting with gold, methotrexate, placquenil,immuran, vioxx,

prednisone, enbrel and a few others I can not remember right now. I

have had some bad reactions in the past. The strangest was when I

was on immuran, I developed non infectous hepatitis and contracted

chicken pox on my liver. My immune system was so comprimised that I

was in isolation in the hospital for 2 weeks. I have been on and off

of methotrexate and one of those times, I lost a great deal of my

hair and developed ulcers in my mouth. However, considering the

seriousness of the meds used for this disease, I guess I feel lucky

that nothing more serious in nature has has happened yet.

I have never joined a group before, I have been kind of dealing with

this on my own. Although I do have a great support system from my

sisters, they would do anything for me. They still can not give me

what I really need and that is someone that knows!

So here I am, I am looking forward to getting to know you all. I

promise in the future I will not write so much. I'll give you my

life story in smaller bites. I'm always long winded, but I am just

excited to have taken this step.

Thanks for listening, Flo