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Rheumatoid Arthritis

People's stories

Disease duration 6-10 years

Interview 09

Interview 09

Age at Interview: 76
Sex: Male
Age at Diagnosis: 69
Background: Retired electrical engineer, married with 4 adult children.

Brief outline:After several months of wrist/hand pains treated with NSAIDs and physiotherapy by GP, RA diagnosis made by private consultant. Mother had RA. Currently RA controlled on Sulfasalazine. Has returned to being active, playing golf, tennis, dog walking etc.

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Was not happy with some of the treatments and chose to stop taking anti-inflammatory medication.
Print Do you feel that you've had any choice in the treatments you've had? No, no, I don't think there was any choice. In the, well, let's go back to right to the beginning, I wish I hadn't had the injections and the other things that the physio and the sort of medication I had at that time, because it was of no use to me at all. And it was also suggested that I took Ibrufen night time and through the day and I wasn't very happy with this either because, I think all you do with the Ibrufen is to shield the problem and I'm a firm believer if you've got a pain well, get rid of it, don't just cover it up with drug or something like that, especially when you get side effects. So, yeah, I got rid of the Ibrufen. This was voluntarily done actually, I simply said I don't want anymore on repeat prescriptions. And it wasn't until I saw the consultant that, I don't know whether he was fortunate or not, but he did prescribe, as far as I'm concerned, the drug which was most suitable for my body. And again I do realise that certain body functions and if something can be prescribed to assist those functions to work properly, that's the way to do it.

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