Catching up?
- A Clinical Trial – Patient Journey – Part I
- A Clinical Trial – Patient Journey – Part II
- A Clinical Trial – Patient Journey – Part III
- A Clinical Trail – Patient Journey – Part IV
Apart from draining trial participants of blood every visit, as I have mentioned before joints and entheses are assessed for improvement – or not.
For my first 26 weeks of the trial, the period we now suspect I was on placebo, there was no real change in my hands or feet. Other areas are assessed but for illustrative purposes, I am only going to talk about hands and feet. Many of the joints subject to assessment, such as hips and temporomandibular joints (TMJ), I have not had problems with, so not much point in talking about them!
Now if you don’t know how many joints are in your fingers and toes, let me tell you – quite a few! They test 28 total in the fingers and 20 total in the toes on my trial.
While my finger joints were never my major trouble spot, my feet were a different story. Every single joint would light up with pain when assessed. In some cases, big red siren type lights.
Four weeks ago there was certainly a reduction in the number of joints that lit up and most of the ones that did react to assessment, were as if the dimmer switch had been activated.
Today? Today only TWO toe joints lit up and even those were a faint glow. That is two out of 20!
The hands? Not one of the assessed joints lit up. NOT ONE! Yes, I am still splinting those two trigger fingers at night, but that is not a finger joint issue and they are also improving.
One of the other aspects I am very pleased about, given my past medication experiences, is NO SIDE EFFECTS! Obviously there can be clinical side effects from medications that I, as the patient, would not necessarily recognise, which is one of the reasons they take all that blood. Are my kidneys OK? Is my liver still happy? But from my day to day living experience I’m not having any side effects like I had with the four previous treatments I have been on.
From here on in, I only visit the research clinic once every twelve weeks. The hard part is over. I don’t expect to have any really news to share for the remainder of the trial, providing everything continues to go well. Yes, there is a possibility I could stop responding at some stage in the future, but I’ll cross that bridge if and when it happens.
That just leaves me with the problem knee, but there have been announcements this week surgery will be commencing again and joints are on the list so I am hopeful that will also be resolved ….. shortly. I’ve already been on the phone to my surgeon’s office, so I’m waiting for a date!
I am very happy with the results. I love the team at Emeritus Research, it really is like dropping in to see good friends. Very professional good friends: as a trial participant I feel very well cared for and valued. Great atmosphere. Just watch the coffee machine if you like flat whites, it can overflow!
Limberation 
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