Targeted biologics for RA Part One Rituxan and Orencia
Rituxan shouldn’t be used if you are planning a pregnancy. Orencia has no black box warning.
All posts tagged: postaday
RA In the kitchen
In the kitchen with RA When I was twelve, I road my bike downtown with my mom’s green stamp book in my pocket. I road my bike back home with my first Betty Crocker Cookbook . I still have it. Now I have many recipe resources including the food section in the NY Times, All recipes and Martha Stewart emails, and King Arthur Baking Recipes. Now I have Rheumatoid Arthritis and my life has added uphill challenges. Between RA pain and fatigue, doctor visits and drug complications, ambition frequently descends into the basic mode of required activity. That activity is as basic as getting dressed in the morning. Cooking? Is it really necessary anymore especially when you add the difficulties of RA to the mix? For some of us, it is. I like to cook. I like the taste of homemade meals. I like the fragrance of baking bread coming from the oven. I enjoy working with my tools and ingredients in my kitchen. Fresh fruit and veggies. Organic chicken. Cream, buttermilk, unsalted butter. Working …
TNF inhibitors
Next line in the treatment of RA TNF inhibitors/TNF blockers are a group of biologic medicines that suppress the body’s response to TNF. TNF (Tumor Necrosis Factor) is a complex protein produced by the white blood cells in response to inflammatory events in the body. Those who have rheumatoid arthritis may be given a TNF inhibitor as part of their therapy. This is the third article in a series about the treatment options for rheumatoid arthritis. You can download the articles or you can read them on Marysarthritis.com. Many insurance plans may require that you start your therapy with a nonbiologic such as methotrexate (MTX). As troublesome as the side effects are in the beginning, methotrexate has a good success rate. When MTX isn’t enough the doctor may order a combination of methotrexate with sulfasalazine and/or leflunomide. A TNF inhibitor may be the added to the methotrexate. Although the TNF inhibitors are basically similar, they do have differentproperties. If one doesn’t work for you, another might. Your doctor will order a TB test and will …
RA at eight years
My eight years with RA has been a rocky road. I am now on Orencia and it again is helpful. Orencia suppresses the T cells in the immune system.00
The Four Non-biologic DMARDs
This article is second in the series on rheumatoid arthritis drugs. The four common DMARDs: methotrexate, hydroxychloroquine, sulfasalazine, leflunomide.
As RA progresses add tools to help.
As RA progresses, adding tools to help ourselves get around will make our lives so much easier.
RA treatment
This article is the first in a series of articles about RA treatments.
Lockdown Update
We are still locked down. We go to Costco and to Smiths. We travel out with our masks and our hand sanitizers. Those we meet are friendly and have smiling eyes behind their masks. If a person depended on reading lips to understand another, they are currently out of luck. Who would have guessed? Certainly not last September. Life changes so quickly. My garden is winding down. The squirrels are fat and happy after eating my tomatoes. The roadrunner couple I saw having sex in my back yard now have healthy teenagers who are as aggressive about eating birds as their parents. Our quail population is booming. They love quail blocks and nest along side the squirrels on a little used side of my property. I make bread every couple of days. I have many recipes for rye bread, but rye flour is now unattainable. Not enough planted by the farmers for the current demand. I also make a lot of oatmeal bread. Lucky for me. I make my own buns for bratwurst. I also …
At home with RA and Covid March 2020
We live in Albuquerque. Sunny day. Tomato plants outgrowing their nursery. Pantry is stocked as usual, and our internet is dependable. Doctor appointments are via phone. Trips to the grocery store are carefully planned. There is no bread flour or other baking supplies on the grocery shelves. Eggs can be hard to get. There is no food in Amazon’s Pantry. We are on lockdown. Yet we still count ourselves as lucky people. We do not have the virus. No one in our family has the virus. Francis, our little cockapoo, is healthy. Our pantry shelves are stocked. Our income, at this moment, is as it should be. Our home is safe. We are lucky. I have rheumatoid arthritis. Recently I had to stop taking my RA meds, methotrexate and hydroxychloroquine as two of my cancer docs said to stop. I had developed necrotic, infected tissue from breast cancer radiation treatment. This infection started in October. I had a partial mastectomy in December followed by a severe cellulitis. Now after months of treatment at the wound …
Seven year anniversary and infection
It was seven years ago this month. I was acutely ill with my first encounter of rheumatoid arthritis. My illness had not been given a name yet. A week before that I had seen the ER doc who started me on prednisone and who was sending me to the rheumatologist that I would see in about another week. I had very little sleep. A few hours a night at most. I was in excruciating pain. Life was not good. I can look back with a sense of relief. I no longer have the kind of pain that made me think I had broken glass shards in my joints. It took several years after my diagnosis for my RA to settle down. I never went into remission. My inflammation has always simmered. Methotrexate was my base. I finally settled into 25 mg subq once a week. It helped. After a few years my pain was never quite the same as it was originally. My feet became central to my discomfort. Custom orthotics and Dr Comfort shoes …
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