One Reason for My Crankiness in 2011 Part 2

If you're just tuning in, read my last post first.

Have you ever heard of post viral arthritis?  If not, you might be in the company of my family doctor.  To be fair, he wasn't the doctor who saw me for my sore throat since that happened during the holidays and he was likely playing golf somewhere hot and sunny.  Had he been the one to treat me, maybe he would have made the connection between my throat virus and the fact that several weeks later, I was unable to move any joint in my body without a crazy amount of pain.

Every joint was f*cked!  It was so difficult for me to go from sitting to standing because of how bad my back was.  Mom mom commented that I looked like Tim Conway when I tried.  We're a such a compassionate family.  Even worse, I was old enough to get the reference!

In addition to popping knuckles and crackling knees, the arm pain that I had been dealing with prior to all this was intensified to the point that I couldn't sleep more that three hours at a time without being woken up by it.  So my first call was to the physiotherapist, who was baffled by my issues, and couldn't do a thing to help

Next I was back at the doctor's, who also seemed baffled.  I begged him for drugs, which he reluctantly prescribed, and which helped somewhat.  Regular pain killers didn't help, but something called Lyrica made it such that I was stoned/sleepy enough to not care about the pain.  I only took them at night, btw.  There was some daytime parenting being done during these times.  

Note:  this is not an endorsement for recreational use of Lyrica.  It dulled 'other' nerve sensations that had no business being dulled, and I never felt clear headed during the time I used it.  Recently, a friend of mine said that her mother was using it but had to stop because it induced suicidal thoughts.  Don't use it if you don't need it!

Then came a round of medical tests.  Blood tests revealed nothing.  MRI's revealed nothing.  Thankfully though, an ultrasound at a sports clinic revealed inflamed bursitis.  Hmmmm.  Bursitis.  Where have I hear that before?  Oh yeah, in my opening paragraph when I asked my doctor about it more than five years ago!!!

I asked to see a rheumatologist, who offered me cortisone shots for bursitis, and diagnosed most of my other pains as post viral arthritis that would go away on its own.  She also said that I had a touch of carpel tunnel syndrome and that I should sleep with wrist braces.  This rheumatologist became my favourite person of 2011.  I had six solid weeks of no pain.  The arthritis is gone, although it did make a second appearance, I almost never need to use the wrist braces anymore, and my bursitis is mostly under control.

So yeah, my arms still hurt but are cruising at a level of 3 out of 10 on the pain scale.  I'll live with it for now.  Sorry for sounding like an old lady complaining about my health, but the old lady version of me was definitely along for the ride last year.  And what a bitch she is!