new to the group

[Guest guest]

first i want to say hello and thank you for allowing me to join this

group, i look forward to getting to know everyone in here. i joined a

few months back , this is my first post as i have only emailed a few

of the members in this group who have emailed me. i don;t know where

to begin, i guess i should introduce myself. my name is marlene i

live in new jersey , i have one son who is 12 and i have been married

15 years. i work full time as an assistant office administrator to a

large group of ob/gyn docs, part of my job description has me

responsible for all the OR scheduling as well as all the insurance

issues that pop up along the way. so that is a little summary about

me. now i will enlighten everyone on some medical background . i was

diagnosed after the birth of my son with psoriatic arthritis and at

that time i was pretty srippled up, i was seeing another rhemy at the

time who all he did was load me up on nsaids and prednisone and gold

injections for a few years. once i realized he was a quack i felt who

was dseeing me on a wekly basis taking my money and not really

listeningt to me tell him i feel lousy.i decided to switxh to another

doc. and i did just that a i was seeing him on a regular basis , was

taken off the meds and placed on differnt ones and i was feeling

better so eventually i stopped seeing him all together . i would say

as far as the arthritis was concerned i was feeling good for many

years but during those years i had the following things happen, i was

always sensitive to the sun ( to the point i would get headaches and

sick ) always having respitory problems, pneumonia 6 times in my

life , asthma flare ups, endometriosis, upper respitory infections,

swollen lymph glands it seemed i was never healhy. now gettnig us up

to the current time period i broke my ankle almos two years ago ( it

will be 2 yrs in feb) i had a bad break , 3 bones that required me to

have surg and a plate w/ 7 screws put in.now from that point on was

when i really felt terrible it seemed i was constantly fatigued, and

all my symptome worsened, in fact i could not do have of what i would

normally do, i was working 60 hrs weeks and hitting the gym 5-6 days

a week with brought me a 67 lb weught loss but once the ankle broke

it was all down hill. so that made me make an appointment with my pcp

and i went over all my symptoms with him and he noticed a rash on my

face and i told him i had tht for a good while before i came to him

and at times i said the rash gets worse. seeing that made him test me

for everything under the sun including lupus. he last words to me

that day was i would like to see that titer come back negative, well

guess what it didn;t so that started me back at the rhemuy and since

march that is where i have been going, he retested my titers and they

keep coming back positive and i gave him all my symptoms so we are

now at the point where he said i have what is a " mild " case of

lupus. i am now at plaquenil and bextra 2 times a day and flexiril at

night and seeing him every 8 weeks for labwork.i hear all kins of

storied like the trauma of the ankle brought the lupus out and since

i already had an auto immune disorder iwas bound to get this. i don;t

know what to believe anymore. but today i called my rheumy to see if

he would prescibe me something for the pain and all he wanted to do

was give me another nsaid, i asked for something stronger as there

are days when it is damp and humid and i ache so terribly that i

can;t function such as today. i am so upset because it isn;t like i

have a history of asking for pain meds and he said no. i am now home

and after writing this i am going to lay down with the heating pad. i

took one of my hubbys pain meds for migraines. does anyone have any

answers as for what to do in this situation ? i was thinking about

going to a pain management center but i don;t know what they aould do.