Other symptoms??

[Noelle04]

I'm just curious if anyone else has experience any other weird symptoms in conjuction with IGM?  For me, my immune system completely tweaked out.  At first, my doctors were convinced I had something infectious because my white blood cell count, Sed Rate and C-Reactive protein levels are always very elevated.  Is anyone else having weird blood issues?  Also, lots of fatigue, joint and muscle pain, and generally feeling like I had a constant case of the flu.  That all started with the IGM.  My rheumy diagnosed me with Fibromyalgia, but like I said, it didn't start until the IGM did.  

I am proud to say I haven't taken a pain killer for the joint and muscle pain since April when I started exercising, which I think really kicked up my immune system and has really made a big difference in the way I feel.  

[eluriajen]

Other symptoms:

This has definitely seemed to be auto-immune for me.

I have had pain and sweeling in my R knee joint and L wrist. These flare up when my breast symptoms are worse.

I feel completely tired and exhausted most of the time.

When my other symptoms are at their worst, I am usually nauseated also.

I have a swollen lymph node in the back of my neck on the same side as my affected breast. I also have pain in that area that runs from the base of my skull down my neck, into my shoulder. When I have a flare-up, the pain sometimes continues down my arm, sometimes to my elbow, sometimes to my wrist. Sometimes the tricep of my affected arm aches.

I have a variety of pain in my breast, axilla, and neck: sometimes aching, sometimes stabbing, sometimes throbbing, sometimes shooting, depending on what "phase" my symptoms are in.

I also have something weird that I haven't heard any of you mention: I have pain underneath and also right below the bottom of my rib cage on the affected side. (maybe in the area of my liver or lungs???). It comes and goes. Sometimes I imagine that I can feel lumps there, but I am not sure. I recently had a chest x-ray (my doctor wanted to rule out valley fever as a cause for all of my symptoms, since I live in Arizona). The x-ray didn't show anything in my lungs. It sometimes seems reactive to what I eat, so maybe my liver? I really don't know. Honestly, I don't want to be tested on anymore, so I haven't had this checked out yet. I am pretty certain that it is connected with my other symptoms - it "flares up" in patterns just like all the rest of the symptoms do. Do any of you have anything like this?

My breast lumps seem to be very changeable. Sometimes they are very large, inflamed, and so painful. There are also times when the inflammation dies down, and they become smaller and soft. Then other areas grow and hurt. That is why I haven't wanted to have surgery: would it really even remove the problem? If they cut out an area while it is inflamed, what if that was an area that would have gone back to soft tissue later? It doesn't seem like this is something foreign that needs to be cut out; it seems like something weird that my body is doing that it shouldn't be doing....so I don't know if surgery can fix that. At least that is my perspective on this issue. What do you guys think?

That's all I can think of for symptoms for now.

Jennifer

[JoJo45]

Flogw reminded me when whe mentioned conjunctivitis:

I get iritis - actually have an active case in my right eye right now - on steriod drops - have had iritis bouts since I was 18

[flogw]

I'm also one of those with some auto-immune issues.... nothing as acute as JoJo, thankfully!

I was diagnosed about a year before the IGM with a non specific inflammatory arthritis - main symptoms chronic fatigue, hand/feet joint stiffness/pain and recurrent conjunctivitis. I am HLA B27+ too, but not rheumatoid arthritis positive, hence the rather vague diagnosis (sound familiar??). Ironically my rheumatologist wanted to put me on methotrexate, which I declined, the deciding factor at the time being not wanting to rule out the possibility of having another child (didn't happen!).  5 years on, I don't seem to get conjunctivitis so much but the other symptoms are just part of life - they get periodically better and worse but never really go away.  At least some of the swings are definitely hormonally related.

I'm also asthmatic, but had not had any treatment/signficant symptoms since my early 20s until I had a bad attack triggered by a chest infection earlier this year. I now get get some mild symptoms usually triggered by something specific.

My blood tests never come back with anything useful - the only thing is sometimes an elevated ESR, which of course is completely unspecific and not much help at all!!

My IGM spontaneously resolved (at least for the moment, but I do wonder if it is part of an broader auto-immune picture, though I don't know of any research on this which proves anythng.

Hope it's useful at least to know that there are others out there with some of the same types of symptoms!

[JoJo45]

- overwhelming fatigue, has somewhat abated
- overall feeling of extreme toxicity, immune reaction (body just went nuts when I had IGM)
- cognitive changes - inability to concentrate
- radiant pain sometimes numbness on whole left side from waist up (IGM side), even up my face
- severe spinal inflammation L5-S1 - documented with MRI and radioactive bone scans, spinal biopsy completed, no cancer of infection found
- arthritis in right knee, right hip, right clavicle
- non-specific brain lesions on MRI - further investigation pending
- allergic to sulfa drugs (realize this is a common drug allergy - but one limited study did show a higher than average penetration in IGM or GM patients)

my blood is always right on - believe it or not, according to my bloodwork, there is no active inflammation in my body - I therefore feel I am somewhere in the realm of "seronegative" spondyloarthritides http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seronegative_spondyloarthropathy
(I am HLA B27+, which is a genetic marker that most folks who have some of the sexier spondyloarthropathies have) - anyway that is my grocery list of health issues at this time.

JoJo