Hi guys, since April I've been having terrible thoracic back pain. It's the worst at night, and I usually have to get up at 4:00 AM and walk around for a while or use a heating pad on my back to help with the pain. If I'm lucky I can fall asleep again around 5:00 AM. For the past couple weeks, this pain has spread over my entire spine, and now I even have pain in my toes, ankles, knees, wrists, and fingers. Sometimes over my Achilles as well.
I've suffered from intermittent thoracic pain for quite some time; I got an MRI of the T-spine in 2007 which showed multilevel degenerative disc disease. Over the past decade, I'd have some periods of thoracic pain that would radiate around to my abdomen, but then it would go away.
Before April of this year, I'd never had problems with pain keeping me awake, although looking back, I believe I did meet the criteria for inflammatory back pain, especially since my back would often feel better after exercise.
I had some blood work done in June:
- RF negative
- anti-CCP negative
- HLA-B27 negative
To me, it looks like RA is very unlikely. I'm wondering if it's enteropathic arthritis or HLA-B27 negative ankylosing spondylitis.
I'm currently waiting for an X-ray of my spine as well as a CT of the sacroiliac joints. I've sent in a request for a rheumatologist to evaluate me. I was on prednisone for a long time when I had UC, so I guess compression fractures of the vertebrae are also something that should be considered.
My j-pouch has been functioning well for a long time, and I'd hate to be diagnosed with something like AS. I know that 90%+ of Caucasians with AS are HLA-B27 positive, but that still means there are 5-10% who are negative!
Does anyone have any advice or thoughts to contribute? Would really appreciate your insight!
