New Member

[Guest guest]

Hi! i have joined this group to get information for my husband. He

has not been diagnosed with RA yet. About a month ago he started

with joint pain all over, hands, knees, shoulders. Also he was very

tired and had a cough and shortness of breath. He went to his

internist who ordered a chest xray, sed rate, RA blood test, and

crp. The sed rate came back very high, the crp came back high, and

the RA was slightly above normal. The chest xray came back not good

at all. He was sent for a ct of the lung and he has a lung disease

with scarring in the lungs. He was sent to a pulmonologist who ran

pulmonary function test that came back bad. The lung doctor put him

on prednisone. He was then sent to a rheumy who ordered many, many

lab tests. The sed rate came down a little with the prednisone, the

crp is normal, but the RA has gone up very high. The rheumy does not

think he has RA but the lung doctor does. The lung and rheumy want

my husband to have a lung biopsy to find out what is causing all of

this. My husband wants to wait a while because he is scared of the

biopsy. He would be in the hospital 2 days with a chest tube.

Have any of you with RA had lung problems with it?

Lynn J.