Well i took my first dose last night and so far so good!! I took them right on bed time, and they did make me a sleep a bit deeper, but nothing too crazy, and no nausea!! YAY!!
I am really glad i talked to you girls about it too, i was armed with loads of questions for my dr (all written down so i didnt forget them!!) and i feel good about starting the meds!
I am to keep taking the steroids for a few weeks until the new meds start to work, and she did say realistically it may take a few weeks to a month for them to really take effect, so fingers crossed its the start of something good and soon i will have normal use of my hands again!!!
Great to hear, Starbright! I do tend to the extreme side of the range of side effects if I get any, but it's good to know the worst and be prepared rather than having it hit you out of left field. What dose did you start on? I started with 5mg and didn't get much nausea at first but as my dose increased it got worse. But I wasn't taking the high dose folate at that point, so that probably had something to do with it!
I had 5mg last night, take folate today, then next week i move up to 10mg. What dose of folate were you on? I am just using some i had left over from pregnancy (which i just checked is actually folic acid.. IS THIS THE SAME THING??? EEEEEK???? Just googled and i think its ok) which is 5mg tablets.
The 5mg ones are the ones you want and folate = folic acid. They are the same thing. At the beginning I was taking a much lower dose - something like 0.5micrograms? The regular pregnancy ones - my rheumy said to take them because I had them left over, but they did nothing.
Well i have started, so far no miracle cure!! But its still early days! I didnt make it into town for my first week check up bloody test, so i ended up having two weeks on the half dose (5mg), but i will be taking the first full dose tonight.
Last week i broke out in a bad dermatitis rash on the back of my hands and up my arms, my hands were good, but the rest of my body went haywire! Yay! This week it hasnt happened, so i dont think it was the meds, i think it was probably going to happen anyway!
I did also get a little headache both weeks three days after the meds which i will be telling the Dr about, nothing terrible, i didnt even take a panadol, but it was there. Did any of you get any headaches??
Startbright just wondering if i can pm you with some questions about your eczema? For the past 2 months i too have been suffereing from a 'weird eczema' and it sounds a little similar to what you describe. So far the treatment is nothing like you describe but i'd love to know a little more about your experience and how you got to where you are with treating it now.
Go for it *EJ*, i am happy to answer any questions about my mystery skin disease!!! PM me, or just ask here whatever is easier!! I have photos too i will share so you can see the different stages and variations of bumps and blisters!!!! Its taken me over six months to get to the treatment i am on now, it started with simple steroid creams whcih made it worse, antibiotics to battle the staph infections that would come from all the cracked skin and then oral steroids which were the only thing to help keep it at bay, but not make it disapear completely!!
At the moment i can say the new meds have gotten rid of "most" of the stuff on my body, my palms are good, but my finger tips are still cracked and very tender and sore!! But the dr did say it may take some time to kick in!! Still taking 15mg of the steroids, which i am soo looking forward to stopping so i can try to loose some weight!!!!
I'm happy to have a chat here Starbright i just didn't want to take away from the original post...
Wow what you describe sounds so similar to what i'm dealing with right now also. For over two months i remember just feeling itchy, it was strange but something i would kind of brush off thinking it was just a figment of my imagination. The itch has been all over from my feet to my scalp.
Then two months ago i got a scaly patch on my breast that was itchy and grew in size. I went to the Dr's and he said dermatitis, prescribed a cream that i should only use for a week but it had no effect.
From then on i went backwards and forwards to the Dr's and unfortunately seeing various Dr's depending on who i could get in with on the day. They really didn't know what they were dealing with, for the breast area they tried treating it as thrush which i now know it clearly wasn't and the thrush treatments made it so much worse .
With following dr's advice i took antibiotics as the bb area became infected (staph just like you described) and not long after that i started getting a pimply rash all over my body that was itching like crazy. I think they thought it was a reaction to the antibiotics but it wasn't. I tried antihistemenes (sp??) which had no effect. I always thought it was too coincidental to not have the bb, the rash and the itch all be related but the dr's seemed to think they were seperate things.
Finally at my 6th appt i got a referral to a dermatologist. He said it was eczema and told me to bath for 20 min each night for a week then smother celestone cream all over my body. I did this, it got the itch and rash under control but with in 4-5 days of stopping the itch was back and now i'm at the stage where the rash is coming back also. I went back again last friday and he wrote a script out for more things but i'm not going to get them until after the nathropath. I'm now bathing again just to keep it all at bay.
Throughout all of this was that i was feeding my DD, I managed to keep doing it and at times i was extrememly uncomfortable. The infection seems to have maybe finally gone from the bb area and it looks the best it has in a long time but it's still itching like crazy.
So i wonder if we're dealing with a similar thing? Although some of what you describe sounds even more severe than mine which i'd hate to imagine. I feel for you immensly. My feet itch like crazy my hands aren't too bad. My rash ended up being visable on my tummy, back, arms, shoulders, neck, chest and tops of my legs.
I have just booked myself into see a natropath so i'll be interested to see the direction she will take and if it has an effect. I just feel like i'm masking the problem with what i've been told to do so far.
So do you have any idea of how or why you got your eczema?
Where you are now with yours you must have tried many different things to have to restort to the steroids and now the methotrexate.
Have you tried a natropath?
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