MPT, Part 1: The Symptoms

In November 2005, right before I got pregnant with my daughter, Ruth, I started getting these very strange eye infections. My ophthamologist diagnosed me with iritis (inflammation of the iris). These infections were reoccuring. I would use stereoid eye drops, wean off them, stop using them (because the infection would go away). Then, the iritis would come right back. This happened off and on for at least a year.

Besides that, earlier in the year I was starting to notice fatigue and lower back pain...I just felt blah all the time. And I never knew what caused it and I had always felt that way to some degree, so I just played it off to stress, exhaustion, etc. I also had weird symptoms like mouth ulcers, multiple UTIs, dry eyes (along with the iritis), frequent infections and sore throats. All spread out they were just symptoms, but put together they were...well, still just symptoms. :)

Dr. Blair, my ophthamologist, said that there had to be a reason why I couldn't completely stop using the stereoid drops. Her first suggestion was that I had lupus. I remember sitting in the exam room and tears flowing down my face at the suggestion of having lupus. Why I was so scared and emotional was partly due to being pregnant (and not knowing it) and because I knew so little about lupus...

So, she sent me to my PCP, who was at that time, Dr. Kevin Hiegel, to do some blood work. Before that appointment, after my appt with Dr. Blair, I found out that I was pregnant with my daughter. He confirmed it with the blood work and confirmed that I had positive genetic marker HLAB27. He said that this was common in people who had rheumatoid arthritis and was a genetic marker for most autoimmune disorders. I found myself a little confused. I didn't really have any symptoms of RA...my joints seemed fine. I had never had any kind of stiffness in my joints at all. And, as far as I knew, I didn't have any family members with RA specifically.

His suggestion was to have some x-rays done and referred me to Dr. Eleanor Lipsmeyer, a rheumatologist, at UAMS. But, because I was pregnant, I couldn't do the x-rays. So, I waited until after Ruth was born to embark on a journey that I would soon find out had no destination...