You are - welcome. Posted: Aug 10th, 2019 - 9:46 am In Reply to: Thanks for the suggestions re Sjogren's - Anon
He kept having low blood volume at first, and he jokingly said he had to keep going and "topping off a quart." The regular docs did not come up with a cause. It wasn't until he finally went to a GI doc that they finally did an EGD and found the problem, the "watermelon stomach." I don't believe there is a known cause for autoimmune diseases, but I wish one could be found. He was found to have hypothyroidism, diabetes, Sjogren syndrome, Reynaud syndrome, and others. He lost a whole lot of weight and now does not take any medication for the diabetes, but still takes the thyroid medication. He takes a rheumatoid medication, Methotrexate, but is not felt to have rheumatoid arthritis--- no joint damage. One doc thinks there might be connective disease. When he would first get in bed and get horizontal, he would have terrible pain. Of course, that was misconstrued as heart related and he eventually went to a heart hospital for tests-- all negative. I believe this was finally felt to be costochondritis and could be due to inflammation of cartilage. There were times when he would be given steroids, which dramatically seemed to fix the problem, but one cannot live on steroids all the time... My own take on all of this is that he could relieve all of the pain and have a better quality of life and get rid of the inflammation if he were to have a better diet and lifestyle. After all, I am about his same age and have no pain at all and need very few medications. The difference: I eat many more fruits and vegetables and try to eat less meat and am trying to eat fewer junk foods, especially sweets. He is a Little Debbie junkie. But, he is a very stubborn man and will not listen to anything I try to tell him.
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