yes...medicine still needs to evolve to clinch things faster. my upper back stiffness started may last year...and started hurting ribs. no other symptom to date except that i have had eye swelling a few times over the last six to seven years which the doc said is not uveitis. b 27 + of course.
now i am having trouble taking deep breaths...breathing seems shallow. it gets locked at the half way point and i feel a pull in my back muscles, mostly the right trapezius towards the arm when i try to pull in a breath. when i lie down then i can sometimes pull in a deep full breath. this trouble was not there before and has started off ever since i got worried about AS and started doing exercises like toe touch (straining to touch the toes, which i can), backward stretches, cat pose, hip rotation and a few others. i get the feeling that these exercises have actually made taut muscles or whatever even more taut and now i am unable to breathe easy like i could two months back.
my doc had prescribed medication in july last year which i never took, and after having this breathing issue panicked and started yesterday...
morning: nucoxia MR (etoricoxib 60 mg and thiocolchioside (muscle relaxant) 4 mg)
noon: flexilor - P ( lornoxicam 8 mg and paracetamol 500 mg)
evening: zandik ( tizanidine 2 mg, diclofenac potassium 50 mg and paracetamol 500 mg)
for now it hasnt relieved the breathing...i am only three doses down yet...sometimes i can pull in a deep breath, mostly i am not liking it.
interestingly i went to a person well known here for helping people with stiffness, pain etc by giving them a quick massage of say 2 or 3 minutes with his fingers probing for muscle stiffness. when i went to him yesterday evening, he did the massage and picked out a muscle in my back and said this is causing trouble...he gave it a massage and for the next hour or so, my breathing was easy and deep...and then again it got tight. he said all you have is taut muscles, but as my dad says...maybe the AS is causing taut muscles and manipulation does ease for a while , but the tautness comes back on.
another thing i noticed is since yesterday when i took the muscle relaxers and the meds i have stated above...for the first time i felt my knees paining...do MR's release tendons and maybe cause pain to emerge or something.
i guess we are such complex bio-machines that we require a billion combinations and permutations to make us work...one reordered equation can cause a hundred others to re balance!
i know it sounds crazy and repetitive, but my mind goes on thinking...what is wrong with me? is it just me making myself fall sick by thinking about it over and over again. do i really have AS? is it just a pulled muscle group in my back? my esr, crp is all normal. what the heck is this? docs these days are too busy really to spend time and answer your queries and doubts and get bugged in any case when they get the feel that this guy has read up on the internet and is quizzing them...they want patients to just take their word and get on with it...not to blame them, they work more in a day than i do in three days i guess.
the moment i tell a specialist: pain in upper back and shoulders more than 10 months, chest stiffness and restricted expansion, b27 +...they take two seconds to say : AS.
earlier i used to worry about AS, now i say...just make my breathing deep and easy and full...changing goals!
