Suggest Treatment For Arthritis In Spine And Foot Numbness

These are the symptoms that I have had over the 20 years of my life. I am female, moderately active, and was medically discharged from the USAF in 2009 for pain in my hips and knees and flat feet. Flat feet, which ultimately ended up being the reason the Air Force discharged me, a problem I have dealt with since I was very young. When I was a child, I remember my mother taking me to a few different doctors and them all saying the same thing. “She needs to wear her supports, and running will probably always be difficult, even impossible, for her.” As a child, I didn’t pay the doctor much mind, and hated my supports with a passion. I was still able to run, but pain became a common factor in my life. Joint pain. Almost all of my joints hurt on a daily basis, from my toes to my fingers. Sometimes it gets so bad, it takes me double or even triple the time it would take me to complete a task on a good day. Fatigue. Most days, I can get through just fine, keeping myself occupied and ignoring how tired I am, but when my guard is down, the fatigue sneaks up on me. Classes are hard, as well as driving long distances alone without some one to keep me awake, as I often find myself drifting off. Sometimes it’s so intense that I feel like I could burst into tears, as though I have been sleep deprived for days when, in reality I sleep a perfectly substantial amount. Loose joints. I have dislocated my right elbow three times in my life before the age of five. Since then I have not re-dislocated it, though moving it in certain ways, or straining it puts a pressure and feel on it that I can only assume is it sliding in the joint. It is not pleasant, to say the least. Growing up, I remember running after my friends in the school field, but eventually having to stop after twisting one or both ankles, at times even when I was just walking. My knees have definitely been at least partially moved out of the joint, feeling like my knee-caps have been replaced by rocks. Those days, each step feels like my whole leg is a hollow tube that has a bomb right in the middle, ticking and waiting to go off. I don’t know how else to describe it. My jaw clicks and snaps when I talk, and most times, I can only open my mouth half way, then I have to wait a moment, and open it the rest of the way, or it makes the most awful cracking noise. In addition to having loose joints, some of my joints (like one of my thumbs, which I can dislocate by myself whenever I chose, and snap back into place easily) are double-jointed. When I first discovered I could snap my thumb into a different joint, I thought I must have had some kind of super power. It wasn’t until I realized that the joint sometimes snapped without my permission that it dawned on me that it was a problem. Often times, I felt compelled to snap my thumb out of and into its joint almost all day, while at other times, I could go months without thinking of my thumb. The dislocations and pain soon began to drive me crazy. It should also be noted that my fingers are extremely hypermobile. I can bend both thumbs down far enough that they touch my arm, and can pull my fingers back almost far enough that I can touch the top of my arm. Osteoarthritis. Self explanatory. Arthritis of the weight-bearing joints. Mine is in my spine, L-5, and while it isnt that uncommon to have, I feel like at 20 years old, I got the short end of a stick. Bad immune system. For most of my life I have lived with the knowledge that if anyone is sick near me, I will soon catch whatever that person had, usually to a more extreme degree. Strep throat, mono, influenza, swine flu, you name it, I’ve had it. Muscle formation. When I first when to bootcamp in 2009, I thought my inability to do a sit-up was due to not being physically prepared, but looking back and remembering how hard it was, how much strain it put on me, and how long it took me to be able to do just one sit up, I think that it might have been due to other reasons. As a 17 year old, doing a sit up shouldnt have been that hard. Carrying weights, my satchel, going up and down stairs, all things that involved muscles, I did badly in for a long while. It was very hard for me to gain muscle, even though I was working out every day. Skin problems. It’s no secret that my skin has been one of, if not the worst things about myself, for years. Until I hit puberty, my skin was smooth, porclien, clear, and basically perfect. However, scars seems to love me. A surgery on my foot that was very minimal when I was in ninth grade left a scar that hasnt faded one bit in the almost six years that it has been, and a wound I recieved on my wrist (one that didnt even bleed) has stayed with me since fourth grade, despite immediate application of neosporin. It was nothing more than a papercut, yet it remains, and inch and a half or so long, and just as vivid as when it first appeared. Scoliosis has suddenly struck, discovered just recently when I went in for x-rays on my back due to severe pain. I’m not sure if the scoliosis is what has been causing my back pain, or if it was a coincidental finding. I’m pending more tests and xrays to determine the cause of the back pain that has been gradually getting worse over the last few months. Stomach problems. As long as I can remember, eating early in the morning has been a recipe for an upset stomach. Within the last few years, my stomach has started to reject foods like coffee, certain cereals, and many other foods. At first my doctor though I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome, but ordered testing for coeliac disease anyway. Luckily the test doesnt show any sign of Coeliac Disease (a condition in which the body sees certain foods that contain gluten, wheat, barley, etc, as an invader and rejects it, causing inflamation of the stomach lining, and other complications), but further testing and a visit to a GI are in my future. I’d really like to be able to drink coffee again but I don’t know when that will happen…Just between you and me, I still drink it when I don’t have anywhere to be, and suffer through the pain. This girl loves coffee. Neuropathy. My right foot…boy would I like to feel my right foot! A few weeks into bootcamp, I noticed I was losing feeling in my foot. I was assured by military doctors that the feeling would return, but it hasnt.