Support Goes A Long Way with Psoriatic Arthritis

I’ve been fighting psoriatic disease for more years than I can count. When I first got pregnant in my mid-twenties, I had been seeing a doctor for psoriasis for over 20 years. At that time in my life, psoriasis was covering quite a large part of my body.

Symptoms, but no diagnosis?

A few years after, I started developing symptoms of psoriatic arthritis when my youngest kid was 5 years old. I visited many doctors, but they failed to diagnose the disease I was developing within. My nails started to turn pale and pit on my hands and toes. 

The patches of flaky skin underneath would thicken and sometimes lift the nail as it grew. I couldn’t care properly for my child at this time. The crazy part of this story was the doctors thought I had developed some sort of fungal infection under my nails, and this is what I was treated for.

My pain started getting worse

My relatives supported me a lot in those earlier times. They helped me with my child and did a lot of the cooking and cleaning. They kept encouraging me to see different specialists. I had been diagnosed with psoriasis, but there came days that I would doubt that too.

I had symptoms of PsA in my mid-twenties. The pain was in my fingers, and my joints had started swelling. At the time I would get sore feet and shoulders, for which doctors had been suggesting I take aspirin, which never helped.

For 25 years I was never tested for psoriatic arthritis. My pain started getting worse. I went to many different doctors over the years, and they thought the pain was in my head.

Was it all in my head?

I had to learn to live with pain. On some days, I felt as if my whole body was in pain, I needed help walking. My toes started swelling, my fingers seemed disoriented. In my early 20, I started going to physiotherapies, convinced that this was, indeed, in my head.

It only took 25 years for a  diagnosis. Can you guess how old my child was at this time? I finally started the treatment that I so desperately needed. 

The doctors told me there was no cure for PsA. They could only do preventive treatment to control any further joint damage. I began to work with my dermatologist and rheumatologist to put together the best treatment.

The power of support

One thing I have learned during this long journey of pain is that we are not alone. There’s always someone else going through the same situation. There are times when you feel like you can’t take it anymore, just know that we have loved ones around us who want the best for us and get us through those rough times.

Find someone to talk to. Don’t drown in hopelessness. Join a support group, participate from a distance or choose to share your story. Get knowledge and keep hoping that one day there will be a cure for the PsO and PsA. Until then we all stand together and share each other’s pain.