Methotrexate strikes again?

Well, since I am sure you all are on the edge of your seats wondering what’s going on with ol’ Kutya’s mouth, I’ll fill you in! It’s getting better. Much todo about not very much, it seems.

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Well thank god for that, haven’t slept for days!

But you know, we all have these moments. Almost as if we don’t trust our bodies anymore. Can’t imagine why that would be!

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That’s exactly it. I don’t feel as if I know my body any more. I don’t know what the rules are, so to speak. With the meds, I’m doing much better than I was a couple of months ago, when it was literally all I could do to get up a single flight of stairs, so I’m going to push myself a little and see what happens. I’ve written out a half dozen benchmarks/tasks I want to complete before next winter. The first is to walk, on my hilly road, three twenty-minute miles three days in a row. As matters now stand, I really have no idea whether that embarrassingly modest goal is achievable, but I think it might be.

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I hope you can manage your 20-minute walks — to me, that’s amazing! You can be sure the meds are working if you’re able to do that!

So glad it much ado about nothing!

It’s not nothing though… well the thing in your mouth turned out minor… but that doesn’t mean the situation was nothing… or that you shouldn’t have bothered posting about it… I think this should be a place where we can post our worries even if it turns out to be something we shouldn’t have worried about in the first place… It shouldn’t have to be a pneumonia before we can talk about it right?..

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Absolutely!

Yeah, that pneumonia is a bear all right. On my third round of ABX, hopefully these will take…

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Curious…I was diagnosed with pneumonia on 4/2. Hit me out of nowhere. I’m mostly a hermit because of the PsA, Crohns, etc. So I’m rarely in a “community” environment. Your mention of having pneumonia made me wonder if it can be an issue with PsA or autoimmune disease in general? I was 2 days away from my first dose of Humira. Now have to wait until late May. Aargh.

The danger, I think, relates to any infection, pneumonia included, when one is on immunosuppressive therapy of any sort. On the biologics, as I understand it, infections can really go rampant. So, with PsA it’s not so much the disease as the drugs used to treat it which present the problem, which is why, I assume, they’re making you wait on the humira. There is also some nasty lung thing associated with methotrexate specifically: I don’t remember the name.

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PsA itself can have lung complications, and these are rare, but can be serious, so whilst I really understand your frustration waiting, it needs to be done :disappointed:.

How the biologics will effect things can depend on the type of infection. Many Viral infections are thought to do most of their damage due to the immune cascade they create - not as a direct consequence of the virus. So, with an overactive immune system, viral bronchitis or pneumonia for example, may be worse in a patient due to PsA, rather than the meds.

Problem is our disease (and our response to meds) is heterogeneous, so at this stage, it can be pretty hard to tell if it’s the disease or the meds. In a situation like this, the docs can’t discontinue or suspend the disease (without almost totally decimating our immune system), but they can do this with the meds, so that’s generally done as a precaution. Bit like giving a diabetic sugar if they have an episode, and you don’t know if they are type 1 or 2.

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