Addressing All the Questions

[Guest guest]

My symptoms were/are:

Sky-high ferritin and SED rate (general markers for inflammation).

Itchy rash on arms and thighs that migrated and morphed in front of

your eyes!

Liver and Spleen swelling.

Arthritis in the wrists, fingers, and knees

Severe full-body muscle pain

Severe sore throat

VERY low white blood cell count... which inexplicably went back to

normal again.

The tests I endured to reach diagnosis are:

Blood tests for: lupus, leukemia, lyme's disease, rheumatoid

arthritis, AIDS, mononucleosis, Epstien Barr, everything under the

sun.....

Scans for tumors: CT scans for brain tumors, gallium scans for body

tumors, breast ultrasound for breast tumors, uterine endoscopy for

uterine tumors, upper G.I. endoscopy for gut tumors (I'm TUMOR FREE!)

OThers: Spinal tap for meningitus (oh, the fun.)

Yes, as someone mentioned, there is no test for Still's Disease. It

is a diagnosis of exclusion, which means the doctors test you for

everything else they can think of to excluse those diseases, and if

you don't have those, you're stuck with the crappy diagnosis of

Still's disease. Bleck!

something interesting: A rheumi I just met told me that even if you

initially test negative for lupus, you may test positive in the

future. Oh, man....