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 23 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 itsyourlifemag.com