Today we met with my rheumatologist. At our last visit, he diagnosed me with osteoarthritis in my hips. He said I probably had either psoriatic arthritis or rheumatoid arthritis in my hands. So he did a bunch of blood tests and X-rays to figure it out.
We dropped Alice off at Brad’s parents’ house on our way out of town. The rheumatologist’s office is over an hour away, so we didn’t want to leave Alice alone for so long. As we were driving down, I got a text that Alice had an accident and peed on the floor! How embarrassing!!!
When we got to the rheumatologist’s office, I had to wait in line behind two women making an appointment. It turns out that I had previously met one of these women at a NAMI convention! How cool! I was happy to reconnect.
I was happy to be called back quickly and the doctor was on time! Yay! He is a very good doctor—I like him a lot.
He said that I had results that aren’t fully diagnostic. I have psoriasis, so that leads you more towards psoriatic arthritis. But I also had a high rheumatoid factor which leads you more towards rheumatoid arthritis. But he said it’s not really important at this stage which one of those two it is since the treatments are the same for now.
We had a long talk about all the options for different medications that would help the rheumatoid or psoriatic arthritis. There isn’t any other medication (other than the Celebrex I’m on now) for my osteoarthritis in my hips. In the end we decided on an infusion medication that I’ll have to get every 2 months. It is a 30-minute infusion of a biologic medication at an infusion center—luckily there is a center 4 minutes from my house! At least I don’t have to give myself shots every week! Now we just have to get insurance to approve it.
He also gave me an order for physical therapy. He wants me to just go a few times and learn the exercises to do, and then try them on my own at home. I’m supposed to compare this with my Tai Chi to decide which works best for me.
I have to get one last round of bloodwork done tomorrow to prepare for the biologic infusion. I will also call the physical therapist tomorrow to try to get some sessions scheduled.
We headed home and picked up Alice who had a great time at my in-laws house! She was a good girl for them except for the peeing incident. She even took a nap cuddled up with my mother-in-law, which is super awesome! When I picked her up she was completely calm. I love how she is so calm about things. It’s not like Hestia who goes wild when she sees me after we’ve been apart LOL!
We got a few pictures in the doctor’s office. The office is decorated with old license plates! In the pictures, I have medium length curly brown hair and am wearing a mint green dress with a purple butterfly in my hair. Hestia is on my lap wearing a purple service dog harness. Brad is wearing green pants, a white shirt, and a blue sweater with a brown ascot and blue and green and pink lacy flowered hat.
