Tell me where it hurts
Today Dan finally met with his Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) doctor that he was referred too 3 months ago. One of the first things this doctor said was he wished the doctor had called him directly and he would have gotten Dan in a week instead of 3 months since he is young and the arthritis is so bad already. The doctor wants to be "super aggressive" with his treatment of Dan. He is currently on some old school RA treatments (Prednisone, Methotrexate, and Arava). The goal of this new doctor is to eventually get off those 3 (we stopped the methotrexate a couple weeks ago already) and to get on a once a week shot of either Enbrel or Humira. This shot will start in 2 weeks (Aug 11) once the results of some baseline lab work, x-rays and ultrasounds come back. The doctor compared the 2 treatments to trying to kill 8 people - using his current treatment its like tossing a grenade at the people and hoping it gets them all and using the new treatment plan its like a sniper killing each one with precision.
So hopefully this new shot works well for Dan. The current meds do work but Dan is still having joint pain and lots of side effects from the current drugs.
2 comments:
Is that diagram showing us where Dan's arthritis is??? This new MD sounds like he's the right one to be seeing--finally! Good luck, Dan. xoxomomxoxo
Luckily that is just the picture Dan is supposed to draw on telling where it hurts. Although most of those joints are at issue. His hands are the worse, followed by feet, ankles, knees.
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