Has anyone had any experience with Pseudogout?
I had a fall in December of 2011 and injured my neck and hand along with other minor bruises, nothing broken though. I was in therapy for two months for my neck and finally have had that taken care of. Just as I was completing my neck therapy, my left wrist, which had been hurting me every once in awhile started hurting me so much. About a week later, the other wrist started hurting a lot too. My orthopediast sent me to a hand specialist who ordered blood work to check for gout, it came back negative. He ordered some cortisone and it improved for a few days and the pain came back. The next visit, the doctor gave me a steriod injection in the hand which helped for about four days and the pain returned. I decided to get another opinion and went to another hand specialist who had done surgery on both my hands a few years ago for carpel tunnel, which turned out great. I told him about the previous doctors' treatment. He did an x-ray and found out that I have "psuedogout" which is called "fake gout". They call it "fake gout" because it has the same symptoms as regular gout. The difference is regular gout is caused by uric acid and pseudogout is caused by salt which is somehow turned into calcium deposits.
Since I had this fall in December, I have been in terrible pain most of time, and I really do have a high tolerance for pain. There is not much they can do for this but give ibuprofen, therapy, ice treatment, etc. It is very incapacitating, because any movement of the wrist is so painful.
Does anyone have any experience with this and if so, do you know of anything else one can do for relief? Thanks