my husband has swelling of the hands and feet

my husband is 30 years old, he had swelling of the face, hands, and feet.  We went to the local er, they gave him pregnizone, which he took for three months.  The pregnizone gave him bad stomach pains, problems digesting foods in general.  He took all his pregnizone.  Those problems went away, but he still has the swelling on his hands, feet and rashes on his wrists.  The dr gave him a type of blood pressure medicine to try and make the swelling and the bumps on his hands and feet go away.  But he got bad hives from the medicine.  So he quit taking them, and are waiting to get new bloodpressure medicine for him.  Now he has what looks like bumps under his skin on his palms of his hands, they swell for a while till they slowly go away, then come back again.  But they are itchy and feels warm, even if you wash the hands or not, they are still hot and swell and are sticky.  He gets a bump on the bottom of the foot where the toes pretrude.  He only gets one bump under the skin on his feet though.  My question is, is there a blood pressure medicine he can take to try and make it go away.  If blood pressure medicine would work or not.  Why does the bumps come and go, but wont go away for good?  This all started when he was mowing the lawn bout 6 months ago, if that helps.  Can you please tell me or help me to try to figure out what is going on so i can help him.  The local dr's and er won't help us.  All they do is give him steroids-pregnizone which makes things worse.  Please help me so i can help my husband get better.  Thank you.

[Bhupinder Kaur, MD]

Hello,
I am not sure what is the age of your husband but some possibilities need to be ruled out. Overweight is one of the causes. Other conditions are diabetes leading to cellulites, rheumatoid arthritis(swelling of feet and fever, swollen painful, tender joints are there),gout(swelling and pain in the feet along with red, swollen big toe that hurts when anything touches it),venous insufficiency, varicose veins and heart and kidney disorders.

It is very difficult to pinpoint any cause without complete physical examination and laboratory investigations like bld sugar, RA factor, serum creatinine and uric acid, ECG and kidney function tests. Please consult a physician for the exact diagnosis.

It is very difficult to precisely confirm a diagnosis without examination and investigations and the answer is based on the medical information provided. For exact diagnosis, you are requested to consult your dermatologist. I sincerely hope that helps. Take care and please do keep me posted on how you are doing.