Rheumatoid Arthritis Support Group
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic, inflammatory, multisystem, autoimmune disorder. It is a disabling and painful condition which can lead to substantial loss of mobility due to pain and joint destruction. The disease is also systemic in that it often also affects many extra-articular tissues throughout the body including the skin, blood vessels, heart, lungs, and...
i don't go back to the rheumy until 9/17 but i had all my ultrasounds last friday. they did imaging of my ankles and the tops of my feet, wrists, hands and fingers, and shoulders. the tech did my hands/wrists/fingers and then the doctor came in to do my shoulders, ankles, and feet. when the doctor asked what hurts the most, i said it's usually the shoulders and the wrists. he went back into my wrists and immediately said, there's a lot of fluid in there, and used the term synovitis.
obviously i went home and consulted dr. google. i don't feel like i found anything useful, but there you are. my wrists are the joints that always look swollen; my hands and fingers sometimes look swollen, as do my ankles. my new rheumy also did another full blood workup and seems to suspect it *might* not be RA; insert sarcastic 'great' here. i haven't gotten all of the results yet because i've been alternately very busy and very sleepy; i'm hoping to call and have them faxed over today. but they did call me and tell me my vitamin d was low (of course, i live in new york - we all have low vitamin d) and i'm now taking an additional 2000iu of vitamin d3 daily.
so for the ultrasound doctor to see lots of fluid in my wrists, is that normal for RA? does that happen? when i first had doppler imaging on my wrists, they said there was increased blood flow which indicated swelling.
obviously i went home and consulted dr. google. i don't feel like i found anything useful, but there you are. my wrists are the joints that always look swollen; my hands and fingers sometimes look swollen, as do my ankles. my new rheumy also did another full blood workup and seems to suspect it *might* not be RA; insert sarcastic 'great' here. i haven't gotten all of the results yet because i've been alternately very busy and very sleepy; i'm hoping to call and have them faxed over today. but they did call me and tell me my vitamin d was low (of course, i live in new york - we all have low vitamin d) and i'm now taking an additional 2000iu of vitamin d3 daily.
so for the ultrasound doctor to see lots of fluid in my wrists, is that normal for RA? does that happen? when i first had doppler imaging on my wrists, they said there was increased blood flow which indicated swelling.
I'm glad you're getting the imaging done. Sounds like the new rheumy is being extremely thorough. I don't think I've ever heard of that many ultrasounds in a day actually :)
Synovitis is inflammation of the synovial fluid. It's very common to RA. The synovitis in my wrists doesn't cause visible swelling though.
I also have edema but that's fluid in the tissues themselves & not in the joints. Your mention of increased blood flow sounds more like they were saying edema than synovitis but it's hard to say for sure. It's a pretty vague explanation. I've been told my edema is decreased blood flow/circulation and that's why it could become dangerous quickly. Also why it's recommended I wear compression socks to increase the circulation to my lower extremities. I also have edema in my upper groin muscle (adductor in my thigh) and while it hurts its NOT visible. Maybe I'm just freaky like that. Who knows?? Lord knows none of my symptoms are ever normal by textbook standards anyway.
So if it's not RA are they leaning toward PsA instead? That seemed to be the direction they were going the last I heard. Either way the symptoms are pretty similar & so are the treatments. PsA not having a bloodtest can make things tricky. There is a new dmard (otezla) and new biologic (stelara) for PsA that some have had a lot of success with. So that's a positive. There's more in the pipeline too.
Good luck and hopefully they'll get you some answers soon.
Take care,
Emerald
no one has mentioned RA vs PsA vs anything else. i don't have psoriasis and we have no family history that i know of. we have a strong history of RA on my mother's side. i do know that my fatigue has gotten a lot better since i stopped the mtx. sure, i still get it - that feeling that you can't hold your head up and keep your eyes open and i have to take a nap. but when i was on mtx it would get much, much worse and much more often. so i'm not planning on taking mtx again.