Hello all
Been to see nurse today for first time amd she marked a score sheet for swollen joints and affected joints. I scored 6 for swollen and 24 for affected joints. These include large and small joints. Im new to all this so is that score normal for Ra?
Many thanks.
I'm very interested to find out what's normal too! They use those numbers along with your blood tests to get a disease activity score (DAS).
I was surprised to find out that they don't include your feet in the score, particularly because I'm having problems with my feet at the moment!
Hello
She didnt include mine but did look at them. So how do we know how bad we are. My bblood tests are negative apart from rf which is slightly raised.
It puzzles me too that feet aren't included which you think would be seen as thou you struggle in agony on them.Then they ask you on a pain threshold of 1-10 what each joint is as they press it.I'll tell you once I come off the ceiling.other joints you have to say its more else they won't help you.Tomorrow you could be worse and you've waited all those months for nothing.
Yes your experience is normal and what will happen at any Rhuemy appointment. Sometimes you're also asked to give a pain score on a line of either 1 to 10 or 1 to 100. 1 being absolute pain / discomfort etc. I was also told by my rhuematologist that feet are not included in modern DAS scores as it takes up too much clinic time. Ironic really as our feet are usually the thing's causing the most problems. My advice for future appt....use your phone camera to take pictures of ANY swelling, redness or similar, then you can show them what you mean if you're symptoms are different next time.