I just got back from an appointment with my rheumatologist.
He advanced the prednisone taper a little. Yay! The rest of the news wasn’t as much fun to hear. He thinks the methotrexate just hasn’t had time to work yet, so he didn’t mess with that except to split the dosage over two days to try and relieve some of the dizziness I get with it.
Then he added pregabalin. He thought I might be developing fibromyalgia the last couple of appointments and even tested for the fibromyalagia points two weeks ago but only one was mildly tender. This time almost all the points he checked were very tender. He said a lot of people with SLE develop fibromyalgia. Apparently amitriptyline is also very effective for fibromyalgia pain (and much cheaper) but it takes much longer to kick in. Since it's developing so quickly, he said its better to give the pregabalin, because in his experience getting the fibromyalgia under control faster seems to lead to it going away as the flare up fades more often. (As opposed to still having the fibromyalgia once the flare up clears up.) … so, fingers crossed!
Sigh. Will it never end?
It hasn't for me, but I'm crossing my fingers for you!!
ReplyDeletetake care of yourself.. I hope it works for you. my fingers are crossed
ReplyDeleteu know i read ur post last evening before wrapping up work...and the thought of it has been crossing my head since then (how we keep wishing this ordeal comes to an end and then doctors come up with such disheartening observations!)...i really pray that things improve for u....
ReplyDeletetake care of urself...hugs..
<3 thanks ladies! xoxo
ReplyDeleteit's gotten significantly worse since I posted this entry... but the Lyrica hasn't had time to kick in yet, so still trying to keep my hopes up! sigh.