Oh, how I wish I could say that the surgery was the end of it, and I’ve been a picture of health since – but sadly not! 

I had a few ‘quiet’ weeks of recovery, before starting to notice a massive increase in my joint pain. This was compounded by a fall I had at my old house which was very inaccessible, leading to several trips to urgent care. Despite scans, an MRI and many painful examinations, the urgent care team diagnosed me as having a menescus tear and a fractured elbow. This was blamed on my use of steroids during the time I had the colitis flares, and I was told to rest. I spent the majority of the summer unable to move, with radiating pain that was keeping me up all night. 

By the end of July, I couldn’t take it anymore and begged my GP surgery to help me – they could see the amount of pain I was in and sent me onto A&E once again, where I was admitted for concern surrounding arthritis. 

After three days admitted, I was diagnosed with enteropathic arthritis – a rare form of arthritis linked with IBD.  I never did have the acute injuries that urgent care had originally diagnosed me with – they had totally missed the obvious and actually made my recovery more difficult, because of how week my affected limbs now were from being braced for so long. 

The working theory now, is that during my colitis flare, I likely did have arthritis in the background, as I had symptoms since I was very young. However, due to the amount of steroids and biologics I was on, it was likely being managed quite well. When I came off of these with the surgery however, the symptoms then came back very angrily. 

Since that diagnosis, I have been trialed on various drugs to get a grip of the arthritis, but I have had many adverse reactions. I seem to have increasingly severe allergies, that are building up in strength, making finding a biologic challenging.