This morning I woke up to a very familiar, yet very surprising, sensation: pain and stiffness in my hands. (So, needless to say, this will be a pretty short post).
Today my finger joints are all stiff - and some of them are visibly swollen. My hands ache whenever I use them, which, of course, is all the time in order to do anything at all. It's a totally familiar feeling, because hand pain has been one of my biggest battles since before I was even diagnosed with RA. I have an arsenal of gloves and braces and soaks and heat packs to try to help me manage hand pain. I'm no stranger to achy hands.
But this morning the hand pain surprised me for two reasons. First, I can't think of anything I might have done yesterday to cause sudden and massive pain in my hands - and usually hand pain of this magnitude follows some kind of overuse. Yesterday morning I did a glucose tolerance test, where you have to drink this nasty sugar syrup and then get your blood drawn to see if you have developed gestational diabetes. The test went fine, but the massive dose of sugar gave me a headache that left me in bed reading a book for the majority of the afternoon. Can this hand pain be from...holding a book? That seems lame.
The second reason the hand pain surprised me is that my joints have been (mercifully) well behaved and quiet through the first two trimesters of my pregnancy (with the exception of that one stupid hip). I've hardly had any trouble with any of my joints in the past few weeks (even the hip hasn't been that bad). But this hand pain feels like the same old RA pain come back again.
Where did it come from? And is it an indication that my remission isn't going to last through the third trimester? I really hope not.
2 comments:
I find that if I hold my hands in one position for long (like a book for an hour) then my hand hurts for hours later. So that could be it, as silly as it sounds.
Have you thought about the extra sugar? I don't know if you've connected your RA to any food triggers. For me drinking any carbonated beverage leaves my joints achy the next day. I try to avoid it but sometimes a girl needs a giant glass of Coke or Dr. Pepper. :D
Oh no - I hope this was is just temporary. Hand pain can be awful, and so limiting.
I hope you've started to feel better!
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