White Deposits on Joints?

[quietdesperation]

Hello,

I am twenty four years old and I am experiencing something strange with my joints.  I will list my symptoms an then maybe you can help me figure out what's going on so I can at least talk to my doctor about it....

I have:

Joint Pain
Finger and Toe Stiffness
White/Yellow looking deposits on my joints, most prevalent on my knuckles. It looks like I can see the bone through the skin and it is actually getting worse quickly.
Much more cracking than usual.

I am most concerned about the white/yellow deposits.  Any ideas??  Thank you so very much.

[quietdesperation]

It actually has come on very acutely.  Perhaps a month?

My full story is as follows, for those interested:

----To whom it may concern:

Allow me to summarize my condition as concisely as possible so you can accurately assess my situation.  I will try to include all for the necessary information, but should you require anything else, please let me know.

I am not currently taking any medications – The only medications I have attempted in the past six years are Zoloft and Zithromax.  The Zithromax was very recent and was prescribed for an ear infection; I took the full dosage of six pills over five days.  The Zoloft had horrific side effects that I was told would subside if I stuck with the treatment so I did for over two months.  They never subsided so I discontinued treatment.  After Zoloft, I vowed I would never take anti-depressants because I knew – knew – something else was going on and anti-depressants were not attacking the route of the problem.

As far as significant diagnosed/treated medical history, I don't have any aside from a few broken bones!

When I was a sophomore at Umass, I started experiencing a host of symptoms that I initially ignored but eventually investigated because they were all quite unusual for someone my age.   The most prevalent symptoms were memory loss (ie not remembering if I locked my door five seconds after locking it), constant dizziness, intense itchiness all over my body which kept me up at night, and a strange circular red rash that my doctor insisted was not consistent with lyme.  I believe he ultimately called it ringworm.  The rash spread in smaller sizes to various parts of my body.  It was a dull red rash that had a sort of crusty darker red around the outside ring.  It was never identified by my doctor he called it “benign”.  It should be noted that I do not recall removing a tick during this period.

My symptoms worsened.  I began to have severe gastrointestinal distress along with breathing difficulties and I became very faint.  My appetite all but disappeared and I lost quite a bit of weight – from a healthy 160 lbs. Down to a downright frightening 135 lbs.  I had severe numbness and tingling in all of my extremities.

I saw numerous doctors from gastroenterologists to neurologists.  They all said the same thing – My blood work is normal, my test results are normal – It must be something psychological like Conversion Disorder.

I withdrew from school, lost health insurance, racked up $12,000 in medical bills, and knowing deeply that it was not a psychological manifestation, I told myself that I would have to take the journey back to health into my own hands.

I managed to get my anxiety under control to the point where I realized that although something was wrong with me, I would forever be undiagnosed and I would have to come to live with the fact that I would forever have a host of bizarre symptoms.  This thought has persisted to this day as I have gotten progressively worse symptomatically.

In the five years between my initial symptoms and now, my life has been relatively good in spite of what I have felt internally.  The memory, dizziness, and cognitive symptoms have never gone away and have progressively worsened.  I have learned to manage/hide them as best as possible.  As far as the physical symptoms, the numbness went away but feeling in my extremities has forever been diminished, the rash has gone away, and everything else has felt relatively OK aside from some pretty persistent fatigue.

What has happened in the past 3-6 months, however, is far worse.  Most of my symptoms over the years were, as I said, manageable, and I was able to uphold a decent life full of exercise, outdoor activity, and social interaction.  Lately, though, my body has begun to break down quickly – I knew this day would come but I did not expect it so soon.  In a period of days my situation went from manageable to a complete nightmare.  The dizziness, lightheadedness, confusion, and vertigo have increased to the point where I don't feel comfortable going to work.  My meticulously maintained body (I exercise religiously and follow a diet that would make any nutritionist proud, guaranteed) has begun to deteriorate, most noticeably in my joints.  My knees have never hurt and all of a sudden they ache.  My fingers have never hurt and now they are deformed and in pain.  I have constant earaches.  I have become faint to the extent that lifting an arm is consciously difficult.  I stopped working out this week that is something I have not done in five years – Not because I don't want to; but because I can't.

This past week I have had intense upper abdominal/chest pain and today I had swelling in the left side of my body, particularly my arms and feet.  The circulation in my extremities has been poor and my fingernails are mostly white/pink.  The swelling has become quite noticeable in my fingers.  I visited the emergency room recently for the chest pain and was discharged with no prescription after a normal chest x-ray.  The pain has since worsened.  It doesn’t appear to be gastrointestinal, as it does not wax and wane with the ingestion of food.

My blood work has recently suggested a possible problem with my kidneys as my BUN level is highly elevated and my vitamin D level is very low (despite years of supplementation and sun exposure).  My Rheumatoid Factor is also elevated.  My Amylase and Alkaline Phosphatase have both been consistently elevated in numerous tests.  I have lost my appetite but I am forcing myself to eat.  I have been told to take it easy with activity.  My neuropsychologist yesterday told me that he concluded a few things based upon our meeting last Friday:  My symptoms are clearly not a manifestation as my psychological standing is phenomenal based on my circumstances.  He said he never tells anyone that.   He also said that he identified a pattern in my memory that is not consistent with ADD but makes it for me to get information into my brain; once it's in my brain, it sticks.  

I have done my homework on this and I understand the difficulty with diagnosing something that manifests itself in so many ways.  I have lived so long with it and I understand it so well that I have a few good ideas that I would like to discuss/hear an opinion on.  Hopefully this will help you get an idea of my history.  If you need any other specific test results, please let me know, as I am not completely sure what will be most helpful to you.

This letter likely comes off as intelligent and legible, despite my complaints, but I urge you to take them seriously as I believe my condition is dire or else I would not be writing this (I would be in Washington climbing Mt. Rainier, because that’s just who I am!!!  That’s what I want to be doing!!).  Appearing to be OK has been one of my main problems when visiting doctors; I have worked so hard, so hard, for so many years to put up a front that things were physically OK with me, that it’s now difficult to convey how quickly things are going wrong.  It doesn’t seem “right”, because to everyone around me I was a perfectly normal 24 year-old and my world came crashing down in the span of a week.  This, unfortunately, is far from the truth.

[Zilian]

Tell us. Since when you've been feeling this?

Keep us posted.