remission

[Guest guest]

Dolores is right. Remission is difficult to define. In my case (RA), for the

first 20 years, I did not know what a flare meant. As my doctor said, the RA

was always simmering in the background, quietly doing its damage, often without

my being aware until the quiet damage became very evident. In later years, I

would have some periods of what I came to understand were flares. From what I

learned when I joined this group, blood work often lags behind what is actually

happening in your body with the disease. And so, one blood test with good

results is not enough to determine remission. I believe my doctor said that you

need about 6 months to really see a trend. With RA, too, remissions are part of

the natural course of the disease, and that complicates the issue even more. My

rheumatologist says he doesn't completely trust blood work; he goes by his

physical exam and with his experience, he can definitely tell. He also says

that for RA to develop, you need three variables in place: a genetic

predisposition, an environmental trigger and a virus or bacteria. With the

complicated nature of rheumatic diseases, we need all the knowledge we can gain

on helping our bodies to cope with the physical stress.