Talk:Polymyalgia rheumatica

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Personal Experience

This appears to be a fairly difficult disease to diagnose. (I have no personal knowledge of giant cell arteritis.) I went through 6 doctors before finding an MD from Saigon at my local VA clinic who sussed out the illness--based, I think, primarily, on an extremely heightened sed rate--and perhaps on my carriage; I presented like a very, very old man.

The disease is much more horrid than is described here; it seems to grow progressively more debilitating as it goes untreated. It had, in my case, a bi-lateral symmetry in all the muscles from hips to shoulder blades and the increasing pain caused extreme depression. The pain is very mobile; it appears randomly and there are even some days when it remits enough to permit thoughts of walking about.

In its strongest (most painful) occurrences it makes it impossible to turn over in bed.

It was once considered a form of hypochondria.

Prednisone really works quickly--I started with an initial dose of 60mg/night. (I woke up the first morning feeling born again in a physical sense. OTOH, my mind was at best cranky and I seemed to have lost all rationality regarding eating. I gained forty pounds in about six weeks. After I managed to cut my dosage I lost that weight.)

I was, as I mentioned, seeing medical care through the Veterans (sic) Administration, and, while it is in many ways a good model for the single payer health care system any sane industrial economy ought to have, it is often slow in its communications between offices. Therefore, not seeing a physician for a few months, but in concert with my primary care provider, I took it upon myself to lower my dosage of the Prednisone and managed to get down to 2.5mg with a good deal of pain. When I tried to stop completely the PMR returned completely.

When I saw my rheumatism doctor she settled upon 5 mg of Prednisone and a liberal dose of opiates when the pain became uncomfortable. Having been through something that in my mind equaled the Tortures of the Inquisition I have not needed to use those medications but sparingly.

This is a rare enough disease that you may need to direct your health care provider toward the literature.

AFAIK, the disease will disappear if the symptoms are controlled for 18 months or more.

john fisher jgfisher@pacbell.net