A Girl and Her Toe

I am trying very hard to be positive about a series of things over the last week and a half.

I woke up last Monday unable to put any weight or pressure on the big toe of my right foot. As I hadn’t actually done anything to my foot to cause such a problem, the pain was both a mystery and, well, painful.

By Tuesday night, my toe still hurt and my ankle and knee were starting to feel the affects of walking funny to favor the sore part of my foot.

On Thursday, I saw my doctor of osteopathic medicine (DO - my general doctor) who took an x-ray and determined that there wasn’t any fracture or other damage she could see in my foot but there was, evidently, very little space in the joints of my toe -- meaning that, as I walked, the bones were more or less rubbing together. My DO was concerned that the problem was related to rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the autoimmune disorder I suffer with, or maybe gout (which is a horribly named old man disease but also another connective tissue disorder that there’s a good chance I could get). She gave me some suggestions for managing pain until I could get into see the rheumatologist (the specialist I see for RA -- see previous post for more information).

I saw my rheumatologist yesterday and there’s good news, bad news and “eh” news.

The good news is that I don’t have gout.

The bad news is that I’ve likely got joint damage from the RA in my feet.

The “eh” news is that at least we now know the treatment we’ve been doing isn’t aggressive enough as I’ve got another damaged area. I’ll start an additional medication today and try it out for the next several of weeks. This prescription involves period blood tests as there’s a chance of it killing blood cells and causing anemia. While waiting for the new medication to kick in, I’ll be on a tapering steroid dose to reduce present inflammation and pain management.

This latest development has me more down than usual about my RA. I usually consider myself pretty lucky that I was pretty young (26) and relatively healthy when I was diagnosed and treatment was started. But I think what few understand -- and what I, even, sometimes forget -- is how serious it really is and how much damage the disease can cause. I get teased a lot for being a hypochondriac or a wimp because I see my DO for “every little thing” but there’s no way of telling which one of those little things is RA-related or a precursor to a bigger issue.

I’m hopeful, after seeing my rheumatologist, that I’ll get back to a normal level of pain and mobility and back to my usual self soon. For now, I’m a little slower and definitely not as upbeat.