Re: Off Orencia & ON Diclofenac, side effect help?

[Guest guest]

I take losec with the diclofenac to protect my stomach from the Nsaid, but

it has not caused me any trouble at all over the last 10+ years I have been

taking it. It works better for me than all of the others I tried.

Now the arava did upset my whole gastro system and caused me to lose weight

as well. I had to stop it

Annette

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 5:27 PM, tombstone1968 <tombstone1968@...>wrote:

> I had cervical spine surgery on 22 Nov (healed nicely). Both the

> neurosurgeon & my rheumy stopped the Orencia infusions in early Oct. Then

> they took my beloved Darvoset off the market. With no pain meds at all to

> cover up the RA I realized I felt no different without the Orencia than I

> did with it.

>

> Last Friday I had a great back & forth discussion with my rheumy about

> this. Seems before he saw me he'd been out in the hall looking over the last

> YEAR of my " symptom & difficulty " checklists to see what has changed and

> how. He walked in, said " Hi, Mrs. , have you noticed the Orencia isn't

> helping anymore? " Well, yeah, duh.

>

> He gave me another torture exam- handling, squeezing & moving my joints

> plus my feet! Geez I hate it when he works my feet over. He'd make a great

> torturer. Ends up that he did that because my blood workup from 2 days

> earlier showed no inflammation present and that all was good. He told me

> that he has a handful of patients that are similar to me. We have normal or

> close to normal blood workup but the physical exam shows significant

> inflammation.

>

> The final decision was to to stop the Orencia. I've been on it for roughly

> 4.5 years. It did help me at first but it petered out. He left me on Arava

> and added the Diclofenac, which is a prescription strength NSAID. The side

> effects are nausea, gas both ways, dizziness, just a whole list of truly

> enjoyable effects. I had to ask the pharmacist days later if I can take an

> antacid with simethicone with all my meds. My kids appreciate my efforts to

> save them from this horrid " chemical warfare " as my 10 year old daughter

> calls it. She calls it that because I unintentionally cleared the living

> room one night.

>

> Are any of you on Diclofenac and, if so, what have you found to help with

> the nausea & " chemical warfare " ?

>

>

>

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