What way to relive pain from Rheumatoid arthritis?
My fingers, wrists, elbows, are hurting, and stiff.
My family doctor gives me prescription MOTRIN and Ive tried some other inflammatory med. Ive tried Tylenol arthritis, and well my friend gave me vicodiin. That works but when It wears off its just back to pain. Plus I dont want to be all popping pills
HELP!
1 Comment »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
http://www.rheumatology.org/public/factsheets/ra_new.asp?aud=pat
If you have Rheumatoid arthritis, you need to see a Rheumatologist, and taking motrin or tylenol, isn’t going to do the job. There are certain drugs designed especially for RA – and the sooner you get on them, the better off you will be. RA can do some major damage to your joints, but it can also affect your overall health, and the inflammation isn’t just isolated to your joints. Pain medication, just masks the pain, it doesn’t decrease the inflammation – while I understand the need to ease the pain, you need to be careful with your joints, if you mask the pain too much, you can do some damage to your joints. If you haven’t seen a Rheumatologist, please, please go see one, they are much better at assessing RA and prescribing the best treatment. Physical therapy can also be helpful – ask the Dr about it. Good luck
If you have osteo-arthritis there are still meds that may work better than motrin – again, a Rheumatologist may be better able to help you – please be careful with the NSAIDS (motrin etc) be sure you have some food in your stomach when you take these – there are some prescriptions that are easier on the stomach that work better than motrin.
If you do have RA, I recommend you learn as much as you possibly can about it – while it may be a little scary, the more you learn about it, and are able to discuss things with your Dr, the better off you will be – and remember, not everyone gets some of the worst parts of RA. But, thats why seeing a Rheumatologist and educating yourself is so important. Again, the sooner the better.