This isn’t exactly riding related, but I know many riders have dealt with issues like this so I’m hoping someone on here can help. I’m desperate at this point.
My mom (60’s) has been dealing with body pain and weakness for a year now. It started in her hands and has progressed to her whole body. The pain is debilitating and no one seems to care. It’s is now in her back, shoulders, arms, legs, etc. Sometimes she can’t get out of the car unassisted because the body weakness is so bad. She cannot open a bottle, even a pill bottle. This is a woman who used to go hiking with me. She would walk around the arena 3million times with small kids on their ponies. She can’t walk around the arena once now. She also has the butterfly rash on her face.
At first doctors thought maybe arthritis in her hands, so they x-rayed and the radiographs were extremely clean. They still offered to inject the thumb joint, which was done. There was some relief in the thumb from this.
When the pain started beginning in other places, she went to a rheumatologist. They did testing for autoimmune disease but everything was negative. The rheumatologist did not feel it was anything autoimmune related and prescribed meloxicam.
The pain kept getting worse, so her normal doctor took her off of the statin she was on (apparently sometimes statins cause pain) She’s been off of it for four months with no change.
Approximately two months ago, she developed a dry cough so she went into the doctor. They gave her a steroid for it.
It was like night and day. She woke up the next day feeling like her old self. Even the rash went away. She did a 7 day course of steroids.
When she came off the steroids she still felt better than before for about a month. There was still pain, but she didn’t have as much weakness.
Not long after, the cough came back so they did a full cardiology workup. Her heart was healthy, no issues. However, there was some mild emphysema in her lungs. They gave her a 30 day course of medication for it, which seems to have worked at this point. (No more cough).
After the steroid treatment, we went back to the rheumatologist. She still doesn’t believe it could be anything autoimmune, and despite already trying meloxicam told her to try it again. Well, that was two weeks ago and it has done nothing.
She’s basically given up on doctors at this point, and I can’t blame her. The responses have been not great. Main doctor has said its age and shes being a wimp. Joint doc said ‘sounds autoimmune’ but isn’t a doctor for that. Rheumatologist says it’s not autoimmune, and basically she needs to learn to live with the pain. I find that unacceptable.
I’m in northern virginia. We are willing to travel if it will get us answers. Thoughts, advice, doctor recs, etc, would be appreciated.
Edited to add:
She’s been tested for lyme twice and had testing for vitamin and mineral deficiency.
