My journey with Methotrexate

General Blog
1

Hi everyone,

I am a 36 year old married mother of a beautiful ten year old girl. I have lived with psoriasis all of my life and over the past year have had worsening symptoms that, at first, were misdiagnosed as being associated with lupus. I have since seen a rheumatologist who informed me that his belief is that I am struggling with flare ups of psoriatic arthritis.

He has recommended that I start Methotrexate injections. I am worried about this for several reasons - for one, it seems that every doctor I see has a different opinion of what could be contributing to my symptoms. In the past year alone I have had cancer scares, lupus scares, multiple sclerosis scares, and now this. To top it off, it isn't even really clear (from what I can tell) that there is any sign of arthritis at all on my x-rays. I am told, however, that this is normal? All of which really does not bode well for having confidence in the diagnosis or the treatment regime.

Online, everything you read about methotrexate sounds scary. Despite that, I am knowledgeable enough to realize that people who are doing well on methotrexate will likely not be sitting down to blog about it. I, however, would like to document my experiences with this medication as I trial it so that people out there struggling like me can have a sense of what they may expect (bearing in mind that everyone reacts differently to medications).

My joint pain is mainly impacting my hands. I work on the computer most of the day and feel an overwhelming tightness at times when I am trying to do my work. It has progressed to the point where I sometimes have difficulty grasping a pen. As a piano and a guitar player, these issues are problematic not just at work but at home as well.

My current medication regime is: Meloxicam 7.5 mg once daily (that has been prescribed for joint pain as I had a cardiac reaction to Naproxen); vitamin D 4,000 iu daily (that has been prescribed to treat my vitamin D deficiency); and I have recently started Folic Acid 1mg daily in preparation for the methotrexate. I have been postponing taking the injection (the excuse I told myself is that I need to wait to get over my cold), however I have committed to start the injection tomorrow.

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You are right of course that 'satisfied customers' don't have much to say about Mtx for obvious reasons. I've taken it on and off for some years now so I think I have the measure of it by now and it doesn't scare me, it did at first. Some people get unpleasant side effects, some find it doesn't work too well but I don't personally think of it as a dangerous drug in the quantities we use for PsA. And invariably monitoring in the form of regular blood tests is very good and that's the fail safe mechanism.

However ..... you'll be wanting as much input as possible. It's a difficult time starting treatment for sure (though better to start before the x-rays show damage) and it sounds as if you've had some worrying false starts with diagnosis. I'd suggest you re-post this in the General Discussion section where a lot more people will see it.

I hope all goes well for you.

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Moved to discussion board :)

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An expert already! Now to tackle the PsA! (I realise you're not 100% that's what it is yet).

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Good luck. I hope it goes well.