Anyone Here Suffer From Inflammation?

[AVR1962]

Hi AVR1962, my goodness you could be describing the pain I had almost to the letter. I was struggling to remember the exact path of it but the knee wrapping and the feeling like your toes were going to fall off (I was skiing with the worst of it and honestly I thought I have severe frost bite!), the ball of the foot felt like it was protruding out in to the bottom of my boot. There are a number of exercises I was given to stretch the nerve out. The most useful of which was to put a phone directory (here they used to be thick!) on the floor and put your toes (in shoes) on the side of the directory and then relax your heels back to the ground. That should help stretch out the bottom half of your leg.

Then the other one, for the ankle, toe bit I can't describe really without actually doing it! It involved sitting with your bad leg up on a sofa stretched out, other leg on the floor. point your toes as far as you can on stretched out leg and then inwards (pigeon toed we call it), lean forward until you are as far forward as possible without causing pain and then bring your head to your chest. if you are doing it properly you should feel your whole sciatic nerve from your back to your ankle/toes. If it hurts too much then sit up a bit straighter and try nodding again! Do this very slowly! It took a while for this to work for me, a few months but eventually the pain went away when doing things like running. However as I haven't been skiing I can't tell if it has been a complete success.

Caroline, I will add these stretches to my routine and see if they make a difference. Thank you taking the time to describe these.

[AVR1962]

I really hate to say this, but it sounds like the way my foot feels when my arhtiritis flares.

I'm bringing an old post back to life. Mushroom, can you describe to me what your foot feel like when your arthritis acts up and does it stay with you day and night for months or can ou get relief?

This pain in my foot is not going away. My back is good, no more stiffness. My back feels in place and despiet that my sciatic nerve is still giving me issues. It is now pulsing behind my knee, hurts to sit. Docs gave me pain killers which I didn't want to take but I tried and had a reaction to the pain killer. Next appt with doc he is supposed to do a ciomplete back work-up thinking the problem in my oot is the sciatic nerve. The suggested exercises did not work.

I cannot continue to do this, am going to try and get into doc today.

[mushroom]

I'm bringing an old post back to life. Mushroom, can you describe to me what your foot feel like when your arthritis acts up and does it stay with you day and night for months or can ou get relief?

My foot problems started with the feeling that there was a big round stone in the front of the ball of my foot between the ball and the toes, and it was incredibly painful to walk on. Then I began having swelling in my toes (and my index fingers and thumbs), following by shooting, elecrical-type pains into the toes and fingers. No relief. Stiffness in the mornings, two hours to get showered and dressed. I was put on DMARDS (methotrexate, Plaquenil, sulfasalazine, diclofenac, leflunomide. Some of these worked but darned near killed me in the process. I am now on Humira (TNF-inhibitor) which has its own little joys of suppressing the body's ability to fight infection so you have to go off it when you have an infection. I am lucky that I can tolerate a while off it (supposed to inject it every two weeks), but was off it for four months last US summer because of various infections, so now my psoriasis has flared again. Thank goodness, touching wood, no shooting pains or lumps in balls of feet.

I have no idea if this bears any relationship to what you are going through - just my experience. I am RF negative, as are lots of people with psoriatic arthritis - how about that? Two autoimmune diseases wrapped into one

[CR5442]

Hi AVR, really sorry that the excercises are not working. Have you had any physio? The other two things that may help are acupuncture (always a great one for pain that the doctors cannot resolve with drugs!) and ultrasound treatment. Can you get acupuncture through your german doctor's surgery? I know they are very in to alternative therapies there.

[AVR1962]

Hi AVR, really sorry that the excercises are not working. Have you had any physio? The other two things that may help are acupuncture (always a great one for pain that the doctors cannot resolve with drugs!) and ultrasound treatment. Can you get acupuncture through your german doctor's surgery? I know they are very in to alternative therapies there.

Caroline, I am seen at a military base hospital for most opf my care, sometimes they send me to a German doc. I was able to get an appt for Friday so I am really hoping that we can get something going on this. Acupucture might be work a try. I did some research on herbs last night and will try them as well. Today I was even thinking maybe I just need to try and move more. I have been laying back on exercise partly due to weather but my foot has been rather painful for quite some time. I did 30 minutes on my treadmill and it didn't kill me, it felt like it almost numbed my foot. Then I soaked it for a good 10+ minutes in hot water. Some where, some how there has to be a way to relieve this and find out what is going on with this foot.

[pricklypear1971]

I'm sorry you're in so much pain.

I had awful plantar fasciitis for years from my Hashis. I took a yoga class and she had yoga balls and they were great for concentrating pressure in my back and other hard to reach areas. I especially love the spikey yoga balls - half circles with rubber spikes that you step on. I still use these if my feet or legs hurt, even my back. It's a little bit of pain that feels sooooo good.

Sometimes I feel my feet are horribly misaligned (I have foot injuries also) and I step on those things and they pop everything back in place and I can feel my back align and relax.

[AVR1962]

Thanks ladies for the replies, gives me more thoughts when I see the doc on Friday!

[AVR1962]

Doc thinks it is planters fasciitis. Had xrays today and have a referral to pediatry.