newly diagnosed reactive arthritis

ReA is one of the diseases in the spondylitis family. I started out with what was called spondyloarthropathy [SpA] but then was later diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis [AS]. AS is also in the spondylitis family. I have had many flare-ups that cause wide spread joint pain. I have had to at times use a walker or cane to get around. Hopefully your flare-up will end soon and you can get going again. In the meantime, there is a lot of information about ReA at the Spondylitis Association of America website. When you get there, click on the about SPODYLITIS tab to select ReA.

I too have ReA. It's a challenging condition, I won't lie to you. What I can suggest is that you stay as active as you can...but you have to be extremely careful to do the lowest-impact exercise you can (pools are your friend, gentle walking on flat ground, for short to moderate distances only) or you'll end up getting less active as the pain takes its toll.

Every case is different. Some Reactive Arthritis/Arthralgias do go into remission. I've had a few relatively good periods over the years, though I was still not even then anywhere near "normal."

I have now had it in some form or another for close to ten years. If there is anything that I can help explain or give advice on, I'm happy to do it for whatever my two cents are worth.

Sorry you are having such a stretch of hard road. It does suck! Hope it gets better for you soon!

You may find that you have strong histamine reactions (itching, rashes, psoriasis etc) as your immune system attacks your skin/fascia. It's quite likely that your reaction was to the Etodolac, but you may notice such reactions even without any obvious cause.

One of the important things to know about ReA is that it is, well, more *reactive* than many other auto-immune conditions, which themselves can flare any time your immune system is stressed: you get a cold, a "stomach bug," the flu, or another kind of infection....even mold exposure or strong allergens....and your pain/inflammation can get much worse. So....avoid catching any sort of infection/germs/viruses or being exposed to excessive mold spores!

The best thing that I've found to fight the inflammation is Turmeric. It's a middle eastern/far eastern spice that is very gentle on your body and has none of the drawbacks of pharmaceutical NSAIDs. If anything, I think it actually works better than they do.

There are a few other things that can help: piperine (black pepper), ginger, bromelain, vitamin D (muscle spasms/soreness as well as your auto-immune condition itself). But turmeric is far and away the most dramatically effective that I've found.

ReA can attack much more than just your joints. It can cause inflammation and damage to virtually any organ in the body, and frequently does. You'll want to take extra good care of your digestive tract, for one thing. Probiotics are good, but most only include 1-3 strains. You want the really expensive stuff that contains 10-20 strains...most particularly L. Reuteri. This has been shown to thicken the intestinal walls and protect against several inflammatory pathways in the body as a whole.

I don't want to be unduly negative, but often people get worse with time -- though it can be very variable and unpredictable. That's why I suggest you do everything you can to slow the progression, avoid immune stress, and stay in decent shape so that hopefully you'll be far better off years down the road than you would have been if you'd just waited around hoping for a remission. A lot of docs will just shrug their shoulders and say "we'll try to help you deal with this for now, and hopefully it will 'burn out' on its own eventually"....and many of us ReA sufferers don't know what to do except trust the doctors.

Frankly, very few docs -- even rheumatologists -- understand ReA very well. So don't expect the voice of experience or specific knowledge from them....you may want to join RISG.org, the Reiters/Spondylitis/ReA-specific support group.

Hey Daisysmom,

I was just diagnosed with reactive arthritis yesterday and I am 28 years old and in nursing school on top of that. I get sick with things like bronchitis and sinus infections pretty often and in September I had a massive kidney infection. Early last month I had pneumonia and just a couple of weeks ago I got a stomach virus. The rheumatolotgist I saw thinks that me getting sick so often has just taken it's toll on my body and caused constant increased inflammation (my sed rate then my pcp checked it was 48). He said that, depending on what the labwork and xrays he ran show up, he may be sending me to an infectious diseases doctor to try to find out why I keep getting sick.


As for the pain I currently have, he gave me a steriod shot and a prescription for Mobic. He wanted me on Celebrex but I'm allergic to sulfa and can't take it.

My hope is that they will find out why my immune system just can't seem to fight anything off on it's own and that will get me on the road to feeling better. The hardest part is that I've missed a fair amount of class time because of everything that's been going on and it's hard to stay caught up with the class. Not to mention the professors getting skeptic about me actually being sick..

yes, i agree with Golitho. It sounds like you have been VERY ill and maybe you need to get it on the record and do what you can so your GPA doesn't suffer.

I have been doing a lot better, by the way. I have been very busy the last few weeks helping my mother to move into an apartment from her old house. I have been able to keep up with the physical work, but do try to spread it out.