Posted 5/7/2007 3:38 PM (GMT 0)
Hey Nan,
Sorry your visit didn't go better. To answer your first question, I have been going to my rheumy for over a year and a half, and I still do not have a formal diagnosis of RA. I also had my appointment last week, and I was on pred and did not get another prescription for anymore :( I have read on here where some take quite high doses and told my doctor that I had a few days where I didn't take any of my pred and some days where I took 20 to 25 mg, and he wasn't happy about that at all! Needless to say, I cannot be trusted with a prescription for prednisone and he said if I am needing to take THAT much of it, we need to move on to something else. I told him all I wanted was something that worked like pred, thats it! It really is a simple request right?? Not in the world of RA, I guess.
I left with a prescription for the dreaded methotrexate, that I have been putting off, because it just sounds scary, and I didn't think I would get to this point, since without a diagnosis of RA, I thought whatever was causing this inflammation would go away at some point. Although, I don't have a positive test, my doctors says you can still have RA, so with your doctor should be treating your symptoms.
Have you been given plaquenil? or any of the other meds to try? When I first started out, we went through all of the NSAIDs first, and I went every 3 months, and they just were not working for me. After that and a year later, my pain increased much more and I then started the plaquenil, and have gone from there...My doctor started out slowly and now he is getting more aggressive, especially when I ended up in urgent care because I was really hurting.
If you can get another opinion, you should. For my doctor, he doesn't dole out pred very often and only when it is really needed!