[TibetanPrincess]

Hey Mel,
I came across this link when researching about my hashi's of course and thought maybe you would gain something from it ( although you have prob some knowledge already) :

http://www.keephopealive.org/report18.html

[soonenough]

Hope you get relief very, very soon, it'sjust4fun. I still remember how it was like: feverish, superhard balls on my chest that just won't soften, pain, tenderness, and the excruciating pain when my babies were trying to nurse. I never even thought that it's possible to get when not nursing. Take care!

[crystalelle]

Hey Mel,

So sorry to hear about the mastitis problem. I am not sure whether you have heard of a kind of herb called 'Sabah Snake Grass'. You can google and read about it on the internet. This grass has great medicinal properties, it is going viral in my country as many has use it for different purposes for its beneficial properties especially on curing cancer. (Not saying that you have, touch wood!) It also has the benefit to cure very bad inflammation on the body too.

I hope you get well soon!

[Isabelle]

Good morning Mel,

Hope it's looking better now.

Is this the immunition you are taking?
http://www.nsc24.com/ImmPlus.htm

Funny the methotrexate is stopped. In the scientific literature, that seems to be the routine treatment for mastitis.

[itsjust4fun91]

Isabelle the only thing I can figure is that for now they are treating this as a bacterial induced case and so the suppression of the immunesystem would work against it. I found this article discussing the type of mastitis that they treat with methotrexate and it says they were tested and found to be non bacterial.

methotrexate and mastitis

Wow, wow, wow, if this is something else related to my arthritis, I'm going to be really annoyed. lol, who would have thought it was even possible?

Thanks to the everyone for their good thoughts and well wishes and all the great immune advice which can always be used regardless of whether it's now or later. I'm really feeling optimistic today. I have less tenderness, even though the mass size is the same, but some relief in the pain is a real mood changer. lol

You gals are great. Always have been, which is one of the reasons, I've stayed here so long.

hugs, Mel

[itsjust4fun91]

Good morning Mel,

Hope it's looking better now.

Is this the immunition you are taking?
http://www.nsc24.com/ImmPlus.htm

Funny the methotrexate is stopped. In the scientific literature, that seems to be the routine treatment for mastitis.

Yep that's it. sorry I forgot to answer earlier.

[Isabelle]

Thank you Mel,

It looks like they know exactly what they're doing. β-glucan is indeed supposed to get your immune system going:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-glucan
(Scroll down to "β-glucan and the immune system"). But it looks much friendlier than methotrexate, and it works in the opposite direction. So your immunity system will rebound, but not too strongly.

Draining should relieve the infection, and help your arthritis, like in the publication I linked above. The antibiotic is more like a back up plan just in case.

If this works, you probably dump the mastitis, the arthritis, and much of the autoimmune problem in one go. If it doesn't, they probably have prednisolon as a plan B. Looking at how clever this is, I bet they even have a plan C.

Good luck, and thank you for being around

[itsjust4fun91]

I figured I would post an update. After two weeks of antibiotics the mastitis has improved greatly. I still have a small mass in the breast but it is still gradually shrinking. I ended up having a staph infection. So far the doctors haven't really been able to do more than scratch their heads as to the why of things and the best we can assume is that it was related to my immune system. It looks like I won't be noogling again anytime soon as long as I still have the mass there.

Due to the staph I may always have a small mass there due to internal scar tissue. I wanted to avoid surgery and chose the antibiotic route but found out later that it's a much longer recovery time. My rhuemy was rather aggrevated that I didn't have surgery because the infection caused a reactive arthritis flare that did a bit of new damage in my foot but once the antibiotics finally began winning it also stopped the flare as well.

I would say that yesterday was my first day of feeling myself again. I finally had energy and didn't want to nap, but I think it's a good sign I'm about over this. I'll have another ultrasound in 6 months. Until then my nbe will only be pm.

Mel

[TibetanPrincess]

Hey Mel, glad to hear you are doing better.

[Isabelle]

Thank you for updating, Mel,

I was out of town for a couple of days. It feels really good to find this news.

So happy it worked. Staph. Maybe your body is just providing clues for your rheumy to think about

Anything I can do?