JIA Update

Last we checked in with Siobhan and her friend JIA, she was in remission with medication. Back in August, the methotrexate, that she gets by shot, was causing come damage to her liver so the Doctor had us take her off the meds completely!! That was happy! So we began life with no medication at all and just managing her Arthritis with a gluten free diet and lots of positive vibes.

Siobhan had her regular check up with Dr. Inman on November 15 and was declared in full clinical remission with no meds! That's huge and exciting!

Then her birthday and Thanksgiving hit. I don't know if it's related or not, but we let her have regular gluten filled cake for her birthday and a Thanksgiving dinner that was bursting with gluten (gasp!! Mother of the year!). The Saturday after Thanksgiving, Siobhan came up in the morning with a very swollen, painful and stiff right knee. :( Such a bummer!!! Back on meds. Not the methotraxate but a daily anti-inflammatory called meloxicam. Through discussion with her pediatrician (who Siobhan coincidentally had a well check with) and emails with D. Inman the decision was made to go for several weeks on the meloxicam and see where that got us.

By Monday of this week there was no improvement! So six weeks of pain, stiffness and swelling....great. So we got into see Dr. Inman yesterday and we were told that we basically had two options. 1) back on weekly methotrexate injections which could possibly not work (at least not very quickley) and damage her liver again. And by the way, do you like getting shots once a week??? 2) Go for the big time and do the joint injection which she's had once before in August 2011. You can read about it here and here. Through discussion with the Dr. and Siobhan, we decided to go with option 2. It's a more drastic option but I don't want to spend months and months giving her shots every week and then end up doing the injection anyway-who wants that?? So on Monday Jan 14th, we will head up Primary Children's Hospital for another round of injections in her right knee.

Oddly enough, her right knee has never been the one we were worried about. Her left knee was the one that first clued us into the fact that something might be wrong back in 2011 and by all accounts, her right knee was never as bad as the left. She didn't even need the injection in her right knee the first time around. That's all changed now. Oh well. Siobhan is very happy though that she gets to take two days off of school and that she'll be asleep through the whole thing. The little things, right?