I’m 35 years old, and mom to an almost five year old.
I just found this board as I was having a pity party - just diagnosed with pneumonia and mild cellulitis on my finger, and have had bacterial conjunctivitis for the last two months that I can’t seem to shake. Reading all your stories the last hour or so head made me feel much less alone.
So here is my story:
The summer of 2014 I was out jogging and suddenly felt severe aching in my left SI joint (though I didn’t know that joint name at the time). It gradually improved with Ibuprofen over the next few days, but returned the next time I went for a jog. Over the next few weeks I developed chronic aching mixed in with stabbing pains in my buttocks and groin, and was diagnosed by my OB with a subloxated symphisis pubis joint (front part of my pelvis).
Over the next seven months, I went regularly to a chiropractor, who sometimes felt like she was helping and sometimes like she was hurting. Starting in January, I developed much more of a pronounced limp, and frequently would have to stop walking and sit down, or get stuck crouching down beside a student’s desk and have to be pulled to my feet.
I visited a GP who ruled out RA and diagnosed me with thyroid deficiency and Mono, but didn’t manage to get me walking. I went to an orthopedic surgeon, who sent me to physical therapy and gave me a steroid injection in my SI joint. I continued seeing a chiropractor. Everything worked sometimes, until it didn’t.
I started feeling searing pain in my left buttock, SI, and leg any time I walked. I lost the ability to balance on my left leg and put my pants on, and to bring a chair into the closet so I could get dressed in the morning unassisted. I would take a Medrol dose pack and once I got to the four pills a day the pain would come back. I got stuck several times trying to leave the school building at the end of the day. If I had a wall, I could pull myself along, but once I got to the open cafeteria and parking lot, it could take me up to 30 minutes to shuffle out to my car.
The climax came one morning in early May when I got out of bed to let the cat out and absolutely could not walk back to the bedroom. I called in sick to work and made an appointment with a new orthopedic surgeon. By the time I went in to see him, I couldn’t walk unassisted at all. He diagnosed me with a fracture of the sacrum and put me on bed rest for six weeks.
I remember during the first few days being in such intense pain that rolling over in bed would make me scream. My brother and his fiancee came to help out, and he had to help me up, crying, and wheel me in an office chair to the bathroom when I needed to go. I started taking Meloxicam at that point, and gradually developed the ability to sit up and move some on my walker.
We moved down to stay with my in-laws so they could take care of me and my almost three-year-old daughter (who I hadn’t been able to run and play with in a year at this point) and I went to one more orthopedic surgeon. He looked at my MRI(s), x-rays, CT scan, and bone scan (I almost forgot all those lovely tests) and sent me straight to rheumatology where I was promptly diagnosed with PsA.
Three days later I had started on Humira, and walked unassisted for the first time in a month into my one week follow-up exam. Three weeks later, my daughter and I flew across the country to join my husband at his new job, and here we are.
Some days I can forget anything is wrong at all, and others I feel like I’m falling apart, but I’m still here, and I can play tag and hide and go seek in the back yard most days. So that’s something.
