And of course today was feeling fine, and asymptomatic as compared
with the problems I had last week. I took the pictures that I had
taken by digital camera, even though the color was not accurate and he
was not able to see the intense redness that develops over my foot
when I am having "the evil foot thing."

From the pictures, he does not think that this is vascular but instead
some sort of very acute condition related to RA. He did recognise that
it looks very painful because the swelling is so acute it looks like
the foot could burst. Cindy ( I hope I got the name right) in talking
about her acute episodes with gout, describes a similar thing, but I
do not have high uric acid levels so gout is ruled out.

He said that without the RA it would look like one of the fevers (he
named it..I forgot it) present in African countries that is highly
infective.

At first, he  indicated that he had never seen anything like it, but
then said he had seen it once but it was not as acute nor did it recur
as often as what I have experienced. So diagnosis for the most part is
unknown except  that it seems to be an acute flare associated with my
long standing RA, and seems to originate in the tendons.

He did say that I can not go on like this as it is too painful,
damaging, and disruptive to my life. This is especially so since it
has increased in frequency over the past year.

So it could mean that remicade is not doing it for me anymore. We
talked habout switching to humira, however that has not yet been
appoved by our pharmacare plan.

The options that we looked at included going on prednisone
continuously, which is a bad idea for me considering I already have
osteoporosis, or trying colchisine, which is used to prevent acute
inflammatory attacks and not just for gout. Colchisine, unfortunately
has the side effect of diarrea. I thought that I would try that, as if
it helps, it seems to carry less risk for me than the prednisone
would.

He did keep my pictures, some of which will be placed in my file, but
he indicated that they could also be used at conferences. Argh!! I
guess if it helps someone I don't mind- it isn't as if anyone will
say, "Hey aren't those Rose's feet?" LOL

So I will start taking the colchisine and hope that it helps.

Rose
@}>-->>>
Please remove "Ima" to reply privately!