PsA Through Life

Hi! I’m K, and though I was only recently diagnosed with PsA, I’ve been experiencing the lasting symptoms for many years. I started with psoriasis at a very young age. Though it was mild plaques, it was fairly consistent. Toward my high-school years, I started developing debilitating back pain that would take me out for days in addition to pain in my left knee joint.

Pain after a car accident

Eventually, I sucked it up enough and went through college trying to get away from it, but in 2019, I was in a car accident that caused my back pain to flare and ultimately injured my left SI joint. What my physical therapist and chiropractor wrote off as overcompensation ended up staying in my SI joint for 2.5 years before I finally told my doctor how bad it was bothering me. At this point, I had been on a medication for anxiety that was commonly used for pain management, so the real intensity of my pain hadn’t come through until January of this year. Once I stopped that medication, the pain spread to my hands, feet, back, and became worse in my SI joint to the point where I instinctively knew something was wrong.

Getting a psoriaitc arthritis diagnosis

After a few months, I landed in the rheumatologist’s facing a diagnosis of PsA and damage to my SI joint. Now, I’m figuring out meds, diet, physical and emotional limitations, and how to function knowing I actually really have an autoimmune disease. I’m grateful to have a core group of support people as well as strangers on the internet to help support me as I figure this out. As the great High School Musical cast once sang, we’re all in this together.