Crazy Day - Off sulphasalazine (8 jan)

I'm having the craziest day today.  The past few mornings, I'd been getting woken up by the pain.  The pain is not as bad as the previous times where I get woken at 4-5am but it is still very frustrating.  In the past, a nice hot shower would take away a percentage of the pain but these couple of days, a hot shower soothes me momentarily during the shower, but the pain is the same after.

I was feeling down and frustrated as I made my way into work today.  It took me a longer time to walk to the office from the train station due to the stiffness and pain.  In the office, I was anti-social and moody.  A colleague who is aware of my condition asks me how I was feeling today.  I told her - I'm in pain but I must remain positive!  However, tears of frustration came to my eyes as I answered her while trying to be upbeat and positive!  

A couple of hours into work, another colleague decided to throw a tantrum at me.  He had come to me consultatively and as I tried to understand the root of his query, he burst out at me in frustration and stomped off.  

That whole episode was a trigger for my tears! My tears got unleashed and I hid in a toilet cubicle for 10mins while I tried to keep my tears in check and get back to normal.  Somehow, I just couldn't. I think my emotional limit was breached by my frustration with the pain today and my tears just kept coming.

So I left the office early for my doctor's appointment.  At the doc's, I learnt that my inflammation markers have reduced. However, it was inconclusive whether it was due to Arcoxia or Sulfasalazine, as I was on both drugs when I took the blood test.  I posed several questions to the doctor regarding the side effects of sulfasalazine, as I had been experiencing a throat inflammation for over a month now (yes, it's still there!) and dry mouth.  Somehow, doctor seemed defensive of the treatment he had put me on and insisted that these side effects had nothing to do with sulfasalazine.  I then had questions about stopping the drug, what the repercussions are (if any) and if I chose to continue at a later stage, is it possible?  Without clearly explaining, doc says it's okay if I wanted to.  I had shared with him that I wanted to explore natural methods such as diet. He seemed to scoff at me, saying all other methods will never ever work and all his patients who had tried came back to him years later and still went on his recommended treatments.  His recommended treatment for me was anti TNF injections and it could be over a course of 2-3 years, with (according to studies) 90% chance of working.

That led me to question about the effectiveness of sulfasalazine.  If there's such positive statistics on anti TNF injections, I wonder what the stats of sulfasalazine!  Interestingly, there is zero success with spine problems based on clinical trials.  Doctor said he had seen some success with his patients, but he put success rate at 50%.  In reality, we are testing this drug out on me, without proof that it actually works.

I've decided to stop medicating and try more natural methods and TCM (acupuncture).  Have a blood test scheduled in 8 weeks time.  2 months should be enough to see any potential effects of TCM or diet... I hope.