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...
Hey all,
My last liver enzyme blood work came back a tad on the high side & my Rheumy wanted me to stop all meds for 4 weeks & retake the test to see if its the MTX or something else.
I'm on my 2nd full week & i'm not going to kid myself by thinking I may be in remission so I'm leading with "how long before the symptoms come back".
It's been a full 2 weeks & I was on a low dosage of MTX anyway, 2.5mg & nothing else. I didn't even take folic acid, I figured on that low of dosage my diet had enough FA in it to combat side effects.
So for anyone who had to stop their RA meds, how long did it take for all of your symptoms to come roaring back, if it all?
So far, no inflammation, no swelling, no bi-lateral pain or stiffness. I do feel a "ping" "ding" here & there, very temporarily & I do workout with weights so I have to kind of decipher what is work out pain as opposed to RA.
But how long did it take for any of you if or when you stopped for a while? Before you said, "Oh yeah it's definitely coming back".
My last liver enzyme blood work came back a tad on the high side & my Rheumy wanted me to stop all meds for 4 weeks & retake the test to see if its the MTX or something else.
I'm on my 2nd full week & i'm not going to kid myself by thinking I may be in remission so I'm leading with "how long before the symptoms come back".
It's been a full 2 weeks & I was on a low dosage of MTX anyway, 2.5mg & nothing else. I didn't even take folic acid, I figured on that low of dosage my diet had enough FA in it to combat side effects.
So for anyone who had to stop their RA meds, how long did it take for all of your symptoms to come roaring back, if it all?
So far, no inflammation, no swelling, no bi-lateral pain or stiffness. I do feel a "ping" "ding" here & there, very temporarily & I do workout with weights so I have to kind of decipher what is work out pain as opposed to RA.
But how long did it take for any of you if or when you stopped for a while? Before you said, "Oh yeah it's definitely coming back".
For me, even with very strict diet, MTX and biologic my best days were/are beyond ping/ding.
Sorry to hear about that nonightsh. Yeah I'm trying to enjoy it but you know how it is? We're so hyper alert to any symptom or anything that resembles a symptom that the first we want to know is.....WHENNN!!? LOL!
I'm grateful to "so far" only be mildly affected by my RA & that it doesn't take that much or that strong of meds to bring it down to a 1 or less not he symptom scale but that doesn't mean it won't become severe later.
I guess all I can do is hope & keep doing what I'm doing.
So stop waiting for the Ra pain and swelling to start and hope it doesn't while you try to figure this out.
gentle hugs....Jen
So the remission is legit! But - the trick is that when you start to feel pain again, you'll wish you hadn't quit. Perhaps when allowed, try just 1/4th of what you used to take...or something like that.
Thanks for your input. Yeah I'm hoping that it was just my indulgence over the holidays of drinking & had a bad flu for 30 days & took OTC's along with upping my MTX from 2.5 to 5mg so hopefully that concoction was what caused the increase. And when I go back in 2 weeks the labs will show normal levels again.
Well, I'm open to whatever the doc is going to try. I've tried Plaquenil & it gave me horrendous rash on my face so we cut that out.
Maybe I just need to cut out the weekend few beers while on MTX. Maybe my body just can't handle it any longer? But I'm okay with that.