I was wondering if your symptoms came on gradually or hit you all of a sudden??
You'll likely find all sorts of answers. For me, it was relatively fast, over a period of months, but it has progressed over time. But if I look back I likely had symptoms well before it brought me to the doctor. You can check out my story under the New to PsA patient stories.
Some people might be super fast if they had a viral illness that precipitated it. And others take years and years for a diagnosis.
I was probably born with it. I had bent feet when I was born which were casted right after birth. I also had asthma severely until I was 5 and I was blind in one eye. So I had some sort of auto immune issues. I had 2 bad fall in childhood that involved torn ligaments, tendon ruptures and broken bones. My Rheumy has wondered if I had tendon ruptures and fell and not the other way around. I had flairs through out my life that came on hard and fast and disappeared just as fast. I was diagnosed with psoriasis at 20 but had had it for years prior. I was not diagnosed until I was 50 and had entered a flare about 3 years before that never ended. I was a nurse for 40 years and had discussed it with my PCP but she did not think it was PsA. My insurance did not require a referral so I took myself to the Rheumatologist. I saw her in 2006 and she did not think it was PsA. I returned to her in 2008 and asked if it isn't PsA what is it? She said Oh yeah that's PsA. So my answer would be both. Sometimes PsA simmers away for years and sometimes it comes on like gang busters. The trick is you don't know which it is until damage is done so it is best to get on a biologic as soon as possible.
Mine came on gradually, but it was easy to diagnose because I had psoriasis for so long, and had the telltale aches and pains over a few years. The symptoms kept piling up and getting more severe and unbearable--for me, it seemed to start in my early 50s, along with going through menopause. But, like a lot of other people here with PsA, I had bouts of unexplained back and neck pain, plantar fasciitis and neuropathy in my feet going back to my mid 30s.
In the beginning, my symptoms were intermittent. A fungal nail. A gimpy knee. Tired. Muscle aches. Dry skin. Dot here, dot there, all seemingly unrelated. Every dot had a different “cause”, and dots never got connected. After several years, the symptoms became more widespread and more regular, and really began to interfere with my life. Those were attributed to the usual causes for a middle aged menopausal female. Of course. My knees went to bits quickly – osteo, they said – and were replaced. It wasn’t until I had erosions in my feet visible on x-rays that they realized that I had an inflammatory arthritis of some sort.
Like you, Ralst, I then researched the various types of inflammatory arthritis (despite the fact that my inflammatory markers had never been much out of line), and the closest match that I could get was psoriatic. Trouble was, I didn’t have psoriasis. Then I started researching psoriasis and saw pictures of my “fungal” nails. When I told my GP that I had self-diagnosed PsA she laughed. A few months later, a rheumatologist and a dermatologist confirmed my diagnosis. At that point, every one of the “dots” got connected.
For me, from “dots” to diagnosis was twenty years. Other people wake up one morning, and find that they can’t get out of bed because of the pain, and get a diagnosis pronto. This disease has symptoms and onset so variable that it really is a difficult one to diagnose correctly, particularly in the absence of obvious psoriasis.
May I was fine. One day in June I woke up with bilateral hands hurting and stiff, two weeks later my wrists were doing the same thing. Another two weeks both shoulders and horrid pain. So I call mine sudden and acute. This is Aug and I have had some relief but still almost unbreable at night.
I had some danger signals for about 2 years - they were so mild I didn't even realise that's what they were until I'd had the disease for a couple of years.
So when it hit me, mine felt out of the blue and acute like Moxie describes. Within 6 weeks the swelling in my lower back, right in near the spine was so signficant my feet and legs went numb for an afternoon (at least they weren't hurting during that time). I could barely walk by then, couldn't count the number of affected joints (I got to 36 and stopped) and couldn't imagine what the future held for me. Visible swelling only turned up in a few however, but stiffness and pain was in lots.
I also got night sweats - I seemed to run a low grade fever pretty much every night. I think that may not be PsA associated, however it certainly started at the same time.
Thanks Moxie and Jen! Mine was very much like Moxie’s experience. It was a very sudden start that ramped up over about 3 weeks.