Sjkly
Thanks for the warm welcome. I was in between loads of laundry and had just checked a few of the other forums and decided to pop in here as well.
Ducky
Thanks for the warm welcome from you as well. Hubby is a mess. LOL His AS and psoriatic arthritis was diagnosed back in 1982 when he was 24. Unfortunatly back then there wasn't a lot of the drugs that they have today. I know that he took something way back then, but I can't remember what it was. It didn't do anything as far as preventing the fusing from happening. Once he fused, the pain pretty much went away but of course he can't bend over anymore. He has also lost the use of his thumbs which are also fused. His fingers started doing the same thing a while back and he was put on methotrexate which helped that. But he was a bad patient and wouldn't go in for his needed bloodwork, so he went off the methotrexate and doesn't take anything now. He uses Dovonex for his psoriasis, but it's still pretty bad...especially his knee. Most of his finger and toenails are also pretty bad and tend to lift and then fall off. He had to have the nails on his big toes permanently removed.
Our son is doing pretty good when he can remember to take his meds. He remembers the a.m. dose but tends to forget the p.m. dose. During his last flare he was taking 80 mg of Prednisone and we finally got him off that. Today was the first day without 6MP, so hopefully that won't cause any problems with the UC. After he took the first injection of Humira, his back pain went away. He was shocked that it worked so quickly. He has a high pain tolerance (including walking around with a broken arm when he was 8), so when hubby had to help him get out of bed to go to the bathroom, we both kind of knew that it was the beginning of the AS. Our son is HLA B27 positive just like his dad. Luckily our other son was negative.
Me? That's a loaded question. LOL I'm a medical mess. I just had surgery number 33 a few months ago. I'm actually doing pretty good at the moment. Main problem is GI in nature, and it's looking like I'll probably have to have #34 eventually. Number #33 should have been my last, but the surgeon decided to do a subtotal colectomy instead of a total. Just need to go back and have the rest removed.