Thanks for thinking of me, my friend! Yes, to say that I'm having a rough time of it would be an understatement, as I have both rheumatoid and osteoarthritis. The osteo is what's ailing my hands - both thumb joints and left wrist, to be exact, and the rheumatoid (or "RA") makes me sick all over...very sick. It's something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. RA is systemic - it attacks joints, yes, but it can also wreak havoc on the sufferer's internal organs; in my case, it's my intestinal tract. During severe attacks, I'm in so much pain/discomfort I can't even go out and other than the foods I have found to be triggers by trial and error (such as dairy and legumes, i.e., lentils, beans, etc.), I have no idea whether what I eat is going to make me sick or not. There is a proven correlation between some types of arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, so none of this is all that surprising - the worst part of it is that nobody's quite sure whether my gut problems are just the RA, or whether I also have Crohn's Disease - they're still trying to figure that one out.
RA attacks can also last quite a while - during the last long one (over a year), I became really weak and dangerously thin. My rheumatologist had me on a really nasty medication called methotrexate for a couple of years: it's a drug normally used for chemotherapy but in lower doses and in combination with hydroxychloroquine can be effective in treating RA in some people. I had to self-inject the stuff once a week. It's also cytotoxic and can do nasty things to your liver, kidneys, immune system, etc., so you have to be closely monitored when on it. It didn't really work for me and I hated putting that stuff in my body, so we agreed that I should stop taking it.
Right now the RA isn't roaring too loudly, it's mostly the osteo that's flaring up and making me miserable - my hands are in agony and the base of my left thumb looks like a small football. I also have some Voltaren and I find that it does work fairly well, but I'm a frequent hand washer and you can't just keep re-applying it. So these days I'm pretty much surviving on Tylenol or Advil (the liquid gels, since they work faster). I have to be careful though, since pain meds can mess with your stomach and I already have enough problems in that area! I have also started taking Omega3, which seems to be helping with the gut issues and overall energy. Other than that, I'm kind of at a loss. I wish I had a wonderful solution to offer, but different things work for different people; some of the posters in this thread have offered some pretty good advice though, I think!
Hang in there, fellow sufferers!
Patty