track fan

Sorry to hear all this Bonnie. I don't know what to say :-(

as soon as I get over this little speedbump it will be all good again, Jake. I plan on running for a long long time. But, yeah, right this minute it sort of sucks, I haven't had ice cream, or coffee for nearly a week!

sounds like you haven't had anything to eat in a week... not the ideal way to drop down to "race weight" :-)

I know, right! I was a slighly bit put off about gaining the "racing weight" - but really not how I was intending to lose it.

Bonnie we ardealing with same thing. I have an autoimmune disease of the joints too....yet they dont know wbich one yet. Not rheumatoid but a seronegative rheumatoid arthritis. I am only 44 and my joints a.d attachment points of tendons have been so inflammed. My white count is quite high. Celbrex helps a little. See rbeumatologist soon. Methotrexate is what i am looking at after complete diagnosis. I wake every morning with or without exercise stiff like a mummy from the waist down. Takes a half hour or more to feel partially normal. Have had plantar fascitis and achiles tendinits very long term. All my symptoms worsened after i got influenza a virus in april. Hence why i stopped blogging. Running has been so hard...i am finally able to run better but the flares hit me hard and unexpected..some days i cant walk normal. I feel btr now that it is fall so i assume cooler weather is btr for me. I dont do well in the heat. I feel more pain. Anyway...just caught up on your blog unexpectedly reading that u r experiencing similar pains in your joints. I am climbing out of my depression from the pain. It has been quite the chalenge for me as a wife, mother and most of all runner. Take care. I hope the methotrexate works. Let me know.

Oh Julie, I am very sorry to hear this. It does sound very much like mine. Have you (or anyone in your family) had psoriasis? I have it, very very mild, so mild that I did not even know that is what it was! Anyway, so I have psoriatic arthritis, with very mild psoarisis and moderate arthritis. All my rheumatoid factors were normal, as was my HLA, the only blood values that were abnormal was CRP and WBC (my CRP went from 0.48 to 6.5 in 3 months! and my WBC count was not neutropenia levels, but borderline low at 4,000).

I have several joints affected. The first sign I had was enthesitis around my elbow (my whole arm was swollen for a while and I could barely bend my elbow). It took the rheumatologist 5 mins to diagnosis me, after 4 months of progressive symptoms and a whole lot of blood tests.

Luckily, even though my knee and feet are affected, they never hurt when I run, only when I get out of bed in the morning, and after I have been sitting for a long time. But man, it is also in my back, and that will wake me up at night in a big way. It is tough, because the NSAIDs help with the pain, but they cause me great distress GI-wise. And the fatigue -- holy cow it is debilitating fatigue ... some days it is so bad that it makes me nauseous.

I have only been taking methotrexate for 3 weeks, and so far it is not really helping my symptoms -- but the swelling has gone down in my arm some. I take it on Mondays, because the day after I take it I can feel kind of sick to my stomach, and a little more fatigued than usual. Those side effects are starting to subside, and I have been messing with the folate -- I am taking double the dose every-other-day (2 mg), and I think that it helps -- I think athletes might need more than non-athletes. They will give you prescription strength folate, mainly because you would have to take too many over the counter pills to get 1 mg. Anyway -- they say it can take up to 2 months for the mtx to work, and then if it doesn't work then we can go to a biologic. I have sort of mixed feelings about that -- on the one hand, there is very little evidence that mxt actually helps with the progression of disease with sero-negative arthritis - it does ameliorate some of the symptoms, but there is no evidence that it halts the degenerative process. The biologics are not as safe (especially as low-dose mtx) -- but they DO slow the degerative process down. So, I am going to be compliant, take care of myself, and see how the next month goes, and then if the mxt does not work, rather than go up in dose, I might discuss starting biologics.

It is really yucky, but you might want to try fish oil -- we use Carlson's cod liver oil (in a lovely -- not -- lemon flavor) -- and I am starting to take biocurcumin (tumeric) pills too. Both of these are strong anti-inflammatories (and supposedly the cod liver oil helps your hair and skin too -- I tell myself that because it is some nasty stuff). I haven't been eating gluten in over a year, so I don't think that is my problem - but I have heard that other people have been able to keep their flares to a minimum by going gluten-free (I think Paul on the blog tried that for a while, and said it didn't really help him - but he also has heard of other people that swear by it).

Please keep me informed how things are going, and feel free to contact me if you have any questions, or just want to vent. It is not fun stuff, that is for sure.

Julie, I forgot -- I know about the depression. They say that too is actually part of the autoimmune thing -- and it gets better once some of the symptoms get better (and you can sleep better). Hugs.