I’m on the come back! Been feeling way better this week. Not good enough to skate, but better. Been doing some exercises and trying get back in shape a little. Stretching again, all that. The arthritis is still there though. It’s really hard to describe what it feels like now. It doesn’t hurt so much anymore, but it makes everything feel slow and restricted. With that being said it was almost 60 degree outside and I couldn’t resist seeing how I felt skating. I didn’t think I’d be able to do tricks at all, but just wanted to push. Surprisingly pushing felt pretty good. I went pretty slow and felt it out, but man it felt good. I did a few manuals between tree shadows and they felt ok. Tried to ollie a bit, but that didn’t work. My leg reflexes are way too slow for that. I did a few slide around 180s where you just pivot off the front truck. Fun. Then I went inside before I did anything stupid. I’m not sure what would happen if I fell. My wrists still hurt pretty bad. I have no idea when I’ll be skating for real. I’m hoping by next weekend. It sure felt good to get out and push a little though.

Officially the most hyped I’ve been for a video in a long time. I think more editing went into this teaser then the entire Real Since Day One video. Ha. Seriously though, the Girl/Chocolate teams are stacked with legends and young rippers and I want to see parts from every one of them!

Rob made everything in this sick clip that makes me wish even more that I could get out and push down the streets.

The final diagnosis is poststreptococcal reactive arthritis. Basically I had a strep infection and it caused my immune system to go haywire and start attacking my joints. Not cool. By itself, the Amoxicillin helped some of the symptoms, but it didn’t do much for my arthritis. I was feeling better over the weekend, but by no means good. I couldn’t walk very well, stairs were hard and Sunday was full of painkillers and wrist pain. The natural course of reactive arthritis is to get better over time. Some cases are weeks, most are several months, even a year. With how severe my case was I have no idea how much longer it would take under normal circumstances.

Last night I took a dose of the arthritis drug Humira which is supposed to get me feeling better quick. And wow it did. I would say overnight I went from about 30% to 40%. Everything that ached felt better. I feel encouraged to say the least. The million dollar question is of course, how long before I can skate again? The nurse estimated six weeks (which would be 3 doses of Humira since you take it every two weeks). I think it’ll be awhile, but not six weeks. I don’t think she understands how determined skateboarders can be. I’m gonna be patient and try not to rush it, but at least I can finally start leaving the house again.

Another 10 days of pain has gone by with no improvement. Yesterday was one of the worst yet. Ugh. After some advice from my aunt who has Rhuematoid Arthritis I went to my general practitioner. We took a new blood sample and the results showed yet again some potential for a strep infection. The initial synovial fluid sample on 10/26 showed a very high streptozyme count (386 when 200 is considered high). Liz and I mentioned this to the arthritis dr and he said it was nothing. That was a test of fluid from my knee. The new sample was blood which doesn’t show strep bacteria count, but instead shows strep antibodies called Antistreptolysin. This also gets flagged as high if the count is greater than 200. MINE WAS 10379.5!!! INSANE! So my GP prescribed me Amoxicillin. I started it yesterday evening. The above photo was taken before I went to sleep as both ankles had swollen up worse that they have yet. They weren’t super painful. Anyways I woke up this morning feeling better. I got out of bed before taking a painkiller for the first time in awhile. I’ve had a few ups and downs so it’s to early to say if the Amoxicillin is doing the trick, but I’m not complaining. At least it makes perfect sense to me to be taking it when the lab results show there is a good chance I have a strep infection.

Things aren’t going good.  On Thursday I was diagnosed with probable Rheumatoid Arthritis.  I was given a shot of steroids and a new prescription of steroids.  The theory was I should get much better.  Unfortunately I ended up getting worse.

Saturday was the worst.  I was unable to get out of bed and ended up back at urgent care.  My arthritis Dr called when he heard I was still getting worse.  He agreed I should stop taking the anti inflammatory steroids and get more blood work done. 

Its been three weeks of pain now and I don’t know what’s wrong yet.  All my muscle is gone.  Liz thinks it might be lyme disease.  Hopefully the lab results show something tomorrow.  This sucks.

Jack and I had this idea a couple years ago, but haven’t been able to make it work until now. We had fun. Well, at least I did jocking out and yelling that my kid was the best 16 year old skater in Colorado. The worst part is there were parents in attendance that think this behavior is acceptable. Check out lot’s of photos on Carleigh’s blog here.

Dean got lot’s of good photos here and here too.

Here’s a couple “Skate Dad” phone clips from the a flyout session.

Such a fun day even if I couldn’t skate at all and mostly had to just sit down. I guess the limp added to the Skate Dad character anyways. Check even more photos here on Jack’s blog.