CAN YOU HAVE A FLARE UP IN ONE ARM BUT NOT THE OTHER. Trying to figure this out, if its from my injury or PM.
thanks
I've had a flare in one foot, then both feet. My left hip, never my right. My right elbow, never my left.
For me it seems to hit my weak spots.
It gets to be ridiculous.
It is possible but not usual. Though often it starts on one side and later spreads to the other. If it is persistently just on one side it is probably an "add-on" rather than just the PMR itself.
Thanks Eileen , just came for ortho Dr.
Have to start physical therapy for my shoulder from the accident. He wants to make sure I don't get a frozen shoulder.
I hope its not the PMR. Been doing so well, down to 1.5 hate to see this mess it up.
Hope it works - but don't go reducing in the meantime!
When my Pain started last summer in my left arm I was sent for physio twice a week for over a month then when it started in my right arm was sent for more blood work diagnosed with PMR then . It left the left arm about eight months later but still was in the other now both are pretty good .
I am also trying to figure this out. Had a cortisone shot in my right shoulder which didn't do anything (nor does naproxen help) so just had an xray to hopefully find out what is going on. Right shoulder has very limited range of motion--can't raise my arm or touch behind my back and it is very painful. Also can't sleep on right side. Left arm is ok although there is a slight bit of pain.
It's funny because prior to this, I thought my pmr was mostly in my groin and leg area. My arms were affected, but not terribly. I had a terrible right knee issue which I discovered was probably an add-on so finally consented to a cortisone shot there which worked (thank you Eileen!!). Recently, the pmr seems to have eased from my lower body and increased in my upper body.
I don't recall any injury to my shoulder. Overuse is a possibility because I am terrible at pacing. Just plain odd.
So whom ever: if it is the PMR do I need to take a higher dose of predisone. Nothing else hurts.
I am waiting to see what my doctor thinks. Sometimes I do increase to a higher dose to see if it does anything, but I am not going to in this case. I prefer to be more cautious, especially because my doctor said one possiblity could be a side effect of the prednisone. And since the cortisone shot didn't work, I can't see how increasing my pill dosage will help. But I am not an expert and this is only my gut feeling.
Karen, a couple of months ago we had a "week of big snow" and I did something to my right arm when clearing snow off the car, repeatedly! It hasn't really got better, every once in a while I do something and yelp with sudden pain. And at night sometimes it kind of aches for a while. I have, however, continued to taper, and this time I've pushed through the bad place in the middle where I usually turn back and try again later. I think it's steroid withdrawal and the discomfort is going away. I never increased the steroid in response to an admittedly minor injury, which isn't getting worse. My personal feeling is that pred needs to be treated with a great deal of respect and should increased only if you are completely certain it's the PMR. As Eileen indicated, pausing any tapering is a good idea.
Last spring I had continual pain in my feet. It started in my right and eventually it was in both feet. I increased my Prednizone from 5mg to 10mg. No relief. I visited my foot doctor as I'd had a foot surgery 6 mos previous. He gave me a steroid shot in my foot. It did nothing. My pain had been going on for 3 mos. I was desperate. My Rhumy saw me shortly after I saw my podiatrist. He was totally puzzled. So we both decided to increase my Prednizone to 20mg. We were at a loss.
Three weeks later I was pain free!
I've had to increase to 20mg twice now for my hip. So for me it was PMR.
Karen: I really would wait until the physio has had a look - they may come up with an answer to what it is. You may need a bit more at some point but I wouldn't just increase without good reason and a single joint problems doesn't suggest PMR.
Pam - Just because it responded to pred doesn't mean it was PMR. Any form of inflammation in the joint may respond well to pred at a higher dose. But if it worked - I don't think I would complain either!
That is exactly what happened to me lately, though it was a case of my doing repetitive strenuous work that aggravated the pmr-caused, low-level bursitis that already existed in both shoulders.
I aggravated my right shoulder bursitis condition by lawn-mowing in step terrain.
I have been forced to increase my pred dosage from just 2.5mg to 4-5mg/day, over the last several days. I could barely raise my arm or move it outward toward my right side, very painful.
Good news is that this "injury" to my inflamed bursae has improved over the last several days, now back to almost "normal" while I am already starting to taper back down quickly toward 2mg or 2.5mg/day.
Seems that the added 2-3mg of prednisone did the trick toward recovery, took a few days though.
In my case, i find if i have a flare up it is all or nothing.........It may be confined to
the upper or lower body,,,BUT,,mostly all over,,,,,,never one side or the other.....
If i have a sore arm ..for instance...i know it is a problem of over working that arm..not my PMR...how ever if i up my pred it will help with the pain...giving me a
false impression that it may have been a PMR problem......But remember that
having PMR does make your muscles more susceptable to damage ,then more
pain,.... For me.....pred is not effective for nerve pain.....nerve pain can be in any area of the body, and in my opinion.has nothing to do with PMR.......
Having said that.......for me....i am wondering if i have a good dose of nerve
pain,possibly it may be a trigger factor for my PMR to flare up somewhat.....
I am still thinking about that.................
Maybe i should modify that post.......for me oral pred is no good for my
nerve pain ......the jury is still out on injections...........
Certainly there are a people I know who have required hip replacements - and once their hip pain was dealt with, they were able to taper off pred relatively easily compared with previous tapering. It was as if the pain from the OA was enough to upset their immune system and the PMR.
Hi Karen-I am new to this forum and not definitively DX w pmr as of yet...I have tremendous pain in both hands among arms feet wrists ankles etc...is hand pain common with this disease?
I do not have hand pain. But others may, not sure.
I'm not sure you could say it is common - but the leeds rheumatology group have established that hand and foot involvement can be part of PMR.