Our Arthritis Journey

On Sunday 3rd Feb, Imogen had gone to my mums for the day. Some time in the afternoon, my mum rang, and asked if Imogen had hurt her ankle at all as she had been limping and it was quite swollen. We hadn't noticed if she'd fallen over or anything to cause it. 

Once mum had dropped her off, we had a look and the ankle was huge! It was also warm to touch. So off we went to our local A&E Dept, where they told me it was probably just a sprain and to come back in 48 hours if the swelling had not gone down.

Cue 48 hours later, by which time Imogen had a swollen wrist as well. We went back up to A&E to see if they could do XRays to see what was going on. Xrays showed no breaks, so we sent back to the A&E dept to wait for the Doctor. We were then told that they thought it was possibly Arthritis and that she'd be transferred to the Children's Ward so see Doctors up there.

A Doctor came in to see us and looked at the wrist and the ankle, she also noticed that since we'd been at the hospital, Imogen's knee was starting to swell. They wanted to keep her in overnight for observation and high doses of Ibuprofen to try and reduce the swelling.

The next day we saw the Consultant who took bloods for numerous tests to try and diagnose Imogen. Once these bloods came back we had a definite diagnosis of JIA (Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis) They thought to begin with that it was Oligoarticular but as more joints became affected it was switched to Polyarticular.

 

Since then we have been back and forth to our local hospital more times than we care to count! Imogen has begun Methotrexate injections once a week. She also had two sets of IV steroid pulses, followed by 3 months on oral steroids. She has also had joint injections under anaesthetic.

We see physio regularly to hopefully loosen Imogen's joints and combat the morning stiffness.