It's Your Life December/January 2015 - 2016 | Page 23

December/January
Joyce: How long did continue taking the antiinflammatory and gout supplements?
Dennis: After between 10 days to a month
multiple joints started to hurt. This told me it was
not gout because gout stays in one joint. Now both
my ankles, knees, thumbs, and the index fingers
all hurt. Up until this point I never missed a day of
work because of gout pain. There was never a day
without pain and it forced me to stay home from
work. Being the soul bread winner with 6 kids I
couldn’t afford to take off of work, but at one point
in April 2014 I missed a week. At one point I was
working in pain and had patience’s who had hip
replacements and knee replacements praying for
me. Some days the pain was so bad I would have
to sit in the car for a time getting up the nerve to
either walk or crawl up our 40 foot driveway which
was on an incline.
At this time my wife suggested I contact a friend
who is an attorney to see what it would take to get

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on disability.
Joyce: Did you do that?
Dennis: No, because I had a kidney issue.
Because I have 6 kids I pay more for insurance
then most people do. I didn’t want this issue on my
record because it would increase the insurance
payment even more. Being a RN I asked some of
the doctors what they thought could be wrong, they
said rheumatoid arthritis. My wife’s birthday was
coming up and she wanted a crawfish boil, and I
was in pain. I knew prednisone would take the pain
away and asked one of the doctors to prescribe it.
While I was on it I was pain free for three days, but
once it was gone the pain was back.
Once I knew after taking prednisone and multiple
doctors saying it was RA I would not continue on
prednisone. I would rather stay in pain and go on
disability then take immune suppressing drugs,
steroids, or anti-inflammation drugs the rest of my
life. It was then I knew I had to find the reason for

2015

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