Story about Takayasus Arteritis , Takayasus Arteritis.

My fight to save my arm

Jan 11, 2019

By: Jenny

Year Condition Began: 2016


My fight to save my arm started in june of 2016 when one day I started having some bad pain in my right wrist. I thought I had injured it somehow but I didn't remember doing anything to injure it. A couple of days later my arm and hand started turning blue, and I knew I needed to get it checked. I made a appointment with my primary care and she immediately sent me to have a ct and ultra sound. The test showed I had a brachial clot that extended down the ulnar, radial and palmer arteries. They were completely occulled, the vascular doctor did emergency surgery to clean out the arteries. They did all kinds of testing to find the cause and could not find the reason, so they left it at unknown cause.
6 weeks later I went for my follow up to get released and they did a doppler on my right arm and hand and found out that the arteries had occulled yet again. The doctor told me that there was nothing else he could do and that they would just monitor me. I asked monitor me for what? Am I going to loose my arm? He said yes its possible. I was devastated so I called my primary care and she was not accepting that so she sent me to another vascular doctor at a different facility. He done a brachial to ulnar bypass, but he couldn't promise that it would work. He then sent me to a hand surgeon to open up the arteries in my hand, hoping to get blood flow to my fingers. Unfortunately after a few months my bypass occulled and I had limited blood flow in my arm and hand. I had a small collateral going down my arm and into my ring finger. He never tried to find the cause and gave up on me as well. I went to another vascular doctor and facility because I didn't want to loose my arm and hand. He sent me for a cta and some other testing. Even though there was nothing else he could do surgically he still wanted to get to the bottom of the cause. He saw on my cta was inflmation in my right subclavian artery and gave a name called takayasu arteritis as a diagnosis and sent me to a rheumatologist the next day. U was the first diagnosis for this facility and they started treatment right away. 60 mg prednisone, methotrexate, and rimacade infusions for 6 months. Now I'm on 7mg prednisone, humeria injections instead of infusions, and leflunomide instead of methotrexate. I had my scans redone a couple of weeks ago and the inflammation looked alot better in my subclavian artery and no other areas are affected. Even though I have limited use of my right arm and hand and it hurts alot, I still have it and I'm grateful cor that. I take it day by day and hope for the best for the future.

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