Hi,
I had been flaring so I have been taking an antiinflammatory medicine for the last couple of days (intomethacin). I had a slight fever when I was flaring, but now my body temp has fallen, still in the normal range I guess, but not very normal for me. We use celcius here and normal body temp is considered around 36.5-37 I guess, and it's not considered dangerous until the temp is fallen below 35. Now my body temp is 36.1 C (I felt like I had a fever so I checked) and last night I was shivering like crazy. Do you think it could be PsA or, more likely, a side effect of the antiinflammatory?
Hey LL,
hard to know. If you're concerned you should call your doc. I know the last time I had a significant flare I had low temps for a while and felt perpetually chilled but that might just be me and we may be confusing correlation and causality. Hope you perk up soon. Slap on a heating pad and pull the covers up tight, drink some hot tea and if you still feel anxious about this, do call your doctor.
Well, here, it is much easier to get an appointment to see a doctor than to call them in person to ask them for advice :) Actually, I believe that it is impossible!
It seems like my temperature has risen back to normal after I slept a bit, but this has been happening for a few days. It falls to a weird number and than rises back again. And I know this because every time I think I have a fever so I check! Last night when the shivering started I was trying to sleep and the thermometer was in the other room so I couldn't get up to go get it. I just reached for my socks next to my bed and then curled up under the blanket. It freaked me out a little.
And, it seems like my period decided to begin a week early! Maybe it had something to do with hormonal changes? I didn't see that coming though, I realized it like an hour after I posted this. Also, my flares seem to begin a week before my period every time!!! It is like a bad case of PMS!!!
Anyway, I will keep monitoring these body temperature fluctuations and I might go and see a doctor if it keeps happening. I experienced so many weird things since the diagnosis and some of them, like seeing a body temp on the thermometer that I had never, ever seen before scares me.
Yes Sybil, maybe I should try and get an appointment after all. I will give myself another 24 hours though. Because I might have let it get bad this time. I wasn't sure if it was indeed a flare, or just one of those pains that came and went that stayed for 24 hours or so. Also, I do usually have this dull pain in my SI pretty much always without getting worse apart from those 24 hours or so episodes. Sometimes that area just feels weird. And I have had the fatigue pretty much consistently since November (I read that the fatigue can stay for months after a big flare, and sometimes it just goes away in days or weeks) so I didn't take that as a sign of getting worse. So I didn't take my medicine until it was pretty clear that I was in a flare (with the chills and worsened fatigue and beginning to limp and shivering). I won't be making that mistake again!
And another trouble is, I know I said that it is easier to make an appointment (and it is), but not with a rheumatologist. I think rheumatologists are the rarest kind of doctors in Turkey. I once read that there were 200 or something rheumatologists (I don't know if that's in fact true) in Turkey, and our population is close to 80 million (give or take a million), so you do the math :) In November I had to wait a week to get an appointment, and I leave for my hometown next week. Maybe I can see a general practitioner or something there if it continues. I hope that it does not.
Right now I'm using an antiinflammatory medicine called Endol and its active substance is Indomethacin. My rheumy said my PsA seemed mild so we would start with the antiinflammatories when I flared, and think about other treatments if it got worse. And to go for a chekup in 4-5 months. I think he said that because there was 4-5 months between the first two flares. But it seems like I haven't been able to be a 100 percent since November. Maybe these are "residual" flares, I don't know. Is that a thing? Because they are not as bad as the ones in May in especially the one in November, but I do seem to get worse and then I get better. Anyway, I am looking forward to going to my hometown, I have a feeling that resting for a while and eating my mother's cooking will be very, very good for me. I also plan to quit smoking while I'm there and relaxed :) Because in the midst of these flares and mini-flares and the unbearable fatigue, I actually worked pretty hard this term, I worked so hard it would have messed with anybodies immune system I guess :) So I will give myself that time to heal, and if I don't, I might go see my rheumy a little early.
Thank you Sybil, I hope so too :) Anyway, we'll see :)