How do you know if the pain that you have is osteoarthritis? Very often, you may not suspect this condition simply because the pain comes on so slowly. You probably put it down to the advancing years and don’t really bother to seek medical advice. This delays the diagnosis and the condition could get bad as the degeneration goes on in the joints. Let’s take a look at all the signs and the symptoms of osteoarthritis.
The first signs are pain and stiffness. After using a joint, you might feel a bit of pain and it might be stiff when you wake up the next morning. This is the ideal time to see a doctor so he can prescribe a course of medication and exercise for you. However, most people don’t really pay too much attention to the pain at this stage. The onset of the condition is usually slow so this may go on for a year or more before it begins to get worse. The next stage is usually swelling and tenderness. At first, you might just see a slight swelling and when you press it, you could feel a sore, tender spot. At about this time, you’ll notice that if you have been sitting around for a while or when you get out of bed in the morning, your joints are stiff and they hurt. This could also be the time when you feel feverish sometimes – this could be due to the inflammation and you might also notice a rash on your legs.
After this, you’ll start noticing that your joints are not as flexible anymore and you begin to find moving them a pain. As the process of degeneration goes on in the joints, you might even hear a grating sound when you move your joints – this is due to the bone spurs that occur which grate against the bone. When it involves the knee joint, you might hear a crackling sound when you move it.
The strange thing about the pain of osteoarthritis is that not every day is a pain-filled day. Some days may be without pain while others can give you hell. However, as it gets worse, the pain gets worse too and you might have very few days when the pain isn’t bad.
Let’s look at the various joints that osteoarthritis affects and how they get affected. The knee joint is perhaps the most affected especially because it bears your body’s weight and there is a lot of strain on it. There could be a lot of pain and swelling of this joint but you can keep it mobile with gentle exercise and medication. In extreme cases, a knee replacement may be called for. The hip joints are also a common place that osteoarthritis affects and this too can be very painful. The pain can radiate all around from the groin to the thighs and even up to the knees. This makes doing even the simplest of tasks like bending even a little bit very difficult. When it gets to the point when mobility is affected, most doctors will prescribe a hip replacement surgery. The other area commonly affected is the spine and while the middle of the spine is rarely affected, the top and the bottom portion could be. This can be very painful, even at rest so when it gets bad, doctors will usually ask you to go in for surgery where the vertebrae are fused together, leaving no room for rubbing together or for inflammation. Osteoarthritis of the spine brings on some strange symptoms besides the pain at times and these could include numbness of the limbs, tingling sensations and weakness.
Other joints that are affected are the fingers and the hands. Osteoarthritis that affects the hands is usually hereditary so if your mother or grandmother had it, you should try and catch the condition early and take remedial measures. For most women, this condition comes on during or after menopause. The joint at the base of the thumb and the joint just below the fingertips can develop nodes and be very painful. These nodes are called Heberden’s nodes. When the middle joints are affected the nodes are called Bouchard’s nodes and these can make using the hand very difficult. The fingers become stiff and gnarled and the joints get enlarged.
You doctor can treat you much better if you tell him all your symptoms – not just about the pain. It’s only when he gets a clear picture that he can diagnose the extent of the osteoarthritis and prescribe a line of treatment accordingly. So write out all that you experience and feel and take it along when you are going to see your doctor. If you catch the ailment early, you can have many years of a pain-free existence. Don’t let it get to a stage when there’s no turning back from the pain.