Hi, I'm Lisa Emrich an RA Patient Advocate living with rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. I'm here to talk about how to manage severe RA.
First you may ask, what is severe RA? Well if the inflammation, pain, damage, limitations are not to acceptable level for you, then your RA is severe. Your rheumatologist has guidelines to go by whether it’s counting inflamed joints, swollen joints and such you have an input in there to determine whether it’s severe or not severe.
First, you will definitely want to seek aggressive treatment. Getting the pain under control is important. But if left untreated for 3-6 months you can have permanent damage from your RA. And then besides having damage from joints, RA can attack your internal organs such as your lungs. So you definitely want to seek guidance of a rheumatologist to best treat and manage your severe RA.
You’ll want to focus on your short-term treatment goals. Pain is a huge problem with RA, so you want to get the pain and inflammation under control. Sometimes NSAID’s medications will help do that. Other times you may need a short course of steroids or prednisone to help get the inflammation under control.
And then you want to focus on your long-term treatment goals. If left untreated even 3-6 months RA can cause permanent damage. It can damage your internal organs as well. So you want to get on a medication as soon as possible. Everybody with RA should be on a disease modifying medication. Your doctor may prescribe an older triple therapy approach which is fine. That’s what my rheumatologist started me with. And then there’s a new term biologic medication. These are drugs given by injection or infusion. And they are bit stronger and they really do help to slow down the disease.
And if you have more damage from RA you may need to have joint replacement to protect the tissue around your joints and to preserve function. Be sure to talk to your rheumatologist and your orthopedic surgeon for information on surgery.
And as far as non-medical stuff care, make sure that you are eating well and that you're getting exercise. Keep your muscles strong and flexible and your joint supple. Focus on strength and flexibility. Protect your joints. Be sure that you're not overworking them. Don’t stretch too far. Be very gentle with your body.
Practice joint protection techniques. You may need an advice from an occupational therapist to learn how to use different aids or shortcuts to help make everyday activities easier.
And that’s how I see it as an RA Patient Advocate, but I do recommend that you reach out to your doctor for more details or go to Google and type in “The difference between Severe RA” for more information. Thanks for watching.
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