{"id":9,"date":"2007-09-18T09:55:30","date_gmt":"2007-09-18T13:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.halnesbitt.com\/2007\/09\/18\/leukocytoclastic-vasculitis-is-crampin-my-style\/"},"modified":"2022-10-26T00:01:12","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T04:01:12","slug":"leukocytoclastic-vasculitis-is-crampin-my-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/18\/leukocytoclastic-vasculitis-is-crampin-my-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Leukocytoclastic Vasculitis is Crampin&#8217; My Style"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_117\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-117\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/09\/leg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/09\/leg-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"My leg, all nastied up\" title=\"leg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-117\" srcset=\"https:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/09\/leg-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/09\/leg.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-117\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">My leg, all nastied up<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>So my body finally got tired of the years of abuse that I have put it through and is finally extracting a little revenge on me in the form of some unknown disease. At present, no one seems to know what the hell it is &#8211; I just look funky and I am ambling around like an old man. It hurts to walk, it hurts to move, it hurts to sit. Since I drink a lot and am prone to large memory lapses, many of them purposely, I have decide to create a little timeline to help track this shit.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Went to the Redskins-Steelers preseason game on August 18th. Drank a lot of beer, peed in the woods a whole bunch. The red marks started showing up on my left leg a day or two later. It was just a few bumps, and was concentrated around my left ankle. Since I had been peeing in the woods, I just assumed it was poison ivy.<\/li>\n<li>The bumps stayed put for about a week, and then they started rapidly spreading up my leg and onto my right leg. I also started developing leg ulcerations, which are basically just gaping black holes in my leg. The bumps went down my foot and extended up to my thigh. This was beginning to worry me, so I went and saw the doctor on 8\/28\/2007. Her response was &#8220;what the hell is that?&#8221; My sentiments exactly. Being a general practicioner, she wanted me to come in the next day and see a dermatologist. So I did. The dermatologist&#8217;s response was &#8220;what the hell is that?&#8221; They mentioned it looked like petechiae, which is a bursting of the capillaries, causing blood to form under the surface. What I thought was a rash was actually blood right under the surface from where my blood vessels were exploding. Just to be sure, they took some blood and did a skin biopsy on one of the leg ulcers.<\/li>\n<li>I started experiencing joint pain on September 1st. It wasn&#8217;t so bad &#8211; just a little stiff. However, when I woke up on September 2nd, I couldn&#8217;t even lift my legs it was so bad. Any sort of pressure on my knees was completely excruciating and I started to get really worried. So I crawled to my truck and drove myself to the hospital and checked in. The doctors at the hospital&#8217;s response was, &#8220;what the hell is that?&#8221; Shiiiiit. They put me on a steroid and antibiotic and told me they wanted to keep me for a few days. The next day the pain was almost completely gone, although the bumps were still there. The following day was the first day of grad school so I checked myself out. The doctors agreed, but made me promise to go see a rheumatologist, as they think it is some funky autoimmune disorder.<\/li>\n<li>The doctors gave me a prescription for prednisone and amoxicillin and everything was completely cleared up by Friday, September 7th, aside from the leg ulcers.<\/li>\n<li>I received my test results. All the blood tests came back in the normal range or negative. The skin biopsy tested positive for leukocytoclastic vasculitis.<\/li>\n<li>On Saturday, September 8th, I noticed a fresh patch of vasculitis on my foot. I made an appointment to see the rheumatologist for the 24th.<\/li>\n<figure id=\"attachment_123\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-123\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/09\/leg3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/09\/leg3-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Nasty Ass Shin\" title=\"leg3\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-123\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-123\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nasty Ass Shin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<li>By Tuesday, September 11th, the vasculitis had spread completely up my legs and was now covering my shins, thighs, butt, lower back and stomach. I had lower back pain and stiffness in my elbow and knees and my right ankle was beginning to swell up. I am also experiencing quick burning sensations on my ankles.<\/li>\n<li>Thursday, September 13th &#8211; my right ankle looks like a sausage casing and I can barely walk. I am in extreme pain everytime I move so I call the rheumatologist and she agrees to fit me into her schedule that day. Very nice lady. So I go there and she explains that leukocytoclastic vasculitis can be caused by literally hundreds of diseases. The treatment is not treating the vasculitis itself, but the underlying disease. So she orders more blood tests and gives me another prescription for prednisone and we make a follow up appointment for the 26th.<\/li>\n<li>By Saturday, September 15th, the swelling in my ankle has gone away, but now I am experiencing joint pain in both knees that makes walking, standing up, and sitting down very uncomfortable.<\/li>\n<li>Sunday, September 16th &#8211; the pain in my knees is so bad that I can barely walk, let alone get around my apartment. It is worse than when I checked myself into the hospital. Standing up is excruciating and requires all my strength. I tried to sit on the toilet and my knees gave out and I fell over and whacked my leg on the side of the toilet and couldn&#8217;t get off the bathroom floor for 20 minutes. Gross. I also have periods where my stomach hurts &#8211; not sharp, but a dull pain, almost like someone is pushing on it. Also, my left testicle feels very tender, like someone kicked me in the nuts.<\/li>\n<li>Monday, September 17th &#8211; the pain in my knees has subsided a little. I can get around ok, although not perfect, and deceided to test my luck and I walked to GWU from work (Farragut West).<\/li>\n<li>Tuesday, September 18th &#8211; the pain in my knees is a little more intense than yesteday, although not as bad as Sunday. However, I have a pain in the back of my left ankle that is making it difficult to walk.<\/li>\n<li>Wednesday, September 19th &#8211; the pain in my knees is worse than yesterday, although not as bad as Sunday, and I have a very pronounced limp. This is coupled with the pain in my left achillies tendon, making it difficult to walk. I didn&#8217;t sleep at all last night because of my knee pain. It was a very dull, low-level pain, but it felt like they were just exhausted, and I just couldn&#8217;t get comfortable. On the bright side, my vasculitis is fading and is now a sort of dull-orange on my thighs and is mostly gone from my feet and shins.<\/li>\n<li>Thursday, September 20th &#8211; Although my knees were killing me all day yesterday, by the end of the day most of the pain had gone away and I really felt ok. I walked all the way to campus and although I had a little trouble sitting and standing, my limp was gone. Then I went out drinking until 4:00 in the morning and now my knees are killing me. Not too bad &#8211; comparable to Monday I suppose. The red marks are almost gone and the bad ones are now a light orange color. I may or may not have a fresh batch down by ankles but I can&#8217;t tell if it is new or old. My feet seem clear and it looks like I have two new ulcerations on my right leg.<\/li>\n<li>Friday, September 21 &#8211; I feel a lot better, although far from out of the woods. I still have that really tired feeling in my knees and lower thigh muscles, but I am walking without a limp, although it is a real pain to stand up or sit down. The vasculitis is still fading, although I think I have a fresh patch on each foot now.<\/li>\n<li>Sunday, September 23 &#8211; Better. Still have the stiffness in my knees, but I really only feel it when I stand up or sit down. The vasculitis is faded, but it isn&#8217;t disappearing the way I hoped, although the fresh patches on my feet from the other day appear to be fading rather than spreading. The ulcerations are crusting up and flaking off. I am hoping that that is a sign that they are healing and turning into just plain old scabs.<\/li>\n<li>Monday, September 24 &#8211; I felt good today, so I rode my bike to the Metro, but that made my right knee hurt a little bit. I have a slight pain in my left achilles tendon and right knee and am a little stiff sitting and standing. The fresh patches I saw the other day are gone, but there is a very small new patch on my left foot. My left leg also had a new bumps &#8211; they are not patches like before; they are individual and spread out and look like the might become ulcerations. They extend up my left leg to the knee. There is a also a large cluster of ulcerations on my outside left ankle.<\/li>\n<li>Wednesday, September 26 &#8211; I went to see the doctor today. The result? Nothing. All the tests came back negative, except the lab forgot to do two of them so I had to go back and get some more blood work done. The vasculitis is very faint and has faded to a dull orange. The ulcerations look like old scabs. My left heel is a little tender and my knees feel fine unless I sit for a while and then go to stand up. The doctor reduced my prescription to prednisone to 20mg\/day and said that there&#8217;s not much to do except monitor it and see what happens. Good I guess, but I am impatient, so I was hoping she might have some pill that fixes everything.<\/li>\n<li>Saturday, September 29 &#8211; Holy shit! When I left last night the vasculitis was completely gone. When I woke up this morning, it is completely covering my thighs, ass and back and parts of my shins and feet. Nasty stuff. I don&#8217;t have any joint pain, so hopefully this is just passing as I lower my intake of prednisone.<\/li>\n<li>Monday, October 1 &#8211; The vasculitis is covering my thighs, ankles, butt, lower back, stomach, shins and feet. It looks really bad. I don&#8217;t think there are any new ulcerations, and my joint pain isn&#8217;t that bad. I have stiffness\/pain in the back of my left knee and my left achillies tendon is sore. Also, today I have a very mild pain in my stomach. It is not so much of a pain as a feeling of pressure. The more research I do on this crap, the more I am becoming convinced that it is Henoch-Schonlein Purpura. We shall see.<\/li>\n<li>Friday, October 5 &#8211; the vasculitis has faded, but not gone away and appears to be mixing with some fresh patches on my thighs. I am having intermittent stomach pain. My knees feel fine, but I have joint pain all over my left foot &#8211; in the ankle, the toes, and the foot itself. Looks like I am not going to be dancing at Vitko&#8217;s wedding. And to top it all off, my piece of shit insurance just informed me that they aren&#8217;t covering my rheumatologist visits, and I have to go see my primary care physician. A step backwards in my treatment and now I have to cough up $2000 to pay for my previous doctor visits. Pisser.<\/li>\n<li>Sunday, October 7 &#8211; Oh my God. I had the most excruciating pain last night. My left foot started hurting really bad around midnight and got progessively worse. By the time I got home, I couldn&#8217;t even walk, and I tried to go to sleep but I couldn&#8217;t because of the intense throbbing. It was bad; I would have cried, if I weren&#8217;t so tough. So it would settle down after an hour or so, but everytime I got up or put any kind of pressure on it, it would start again. When I finally woke up today, the pain wasn&#8217;t that bad, but I have fresh vasculitis all over both legs and it looks like new ulcerations on both shins. When I took off my sock, my left ankle is swollen up like a sausage casing. Pretty scary stuff. I am putting myself back on prednisone at 20mg\/day.<\/li>\n<figure id=\"attachment_121\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-121\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/09\/leg2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/09\/leg2-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Sausage Casing\" title=\"Sausage Casing\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-121\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-121\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Swollen up like a sausage casing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<li>Monday, October 8 &#8211; My ankle is killing me; it was a real pain trying to work this morning. The vasculitis seems to be fading on my back but is very prevalent on my left leg. And the new ulcerations on the front of my shin are not cool.<\/li>\n<li>Wednesday, October 10 &#8211; Rough night last night, but for other reasons. But when I woke up this morning, the sun was still shining; I think I&#8217;m going to be ok. As for my foot, the swelling has gone down, and I am walking without a limp, although it is a little stiff on both feet. I cut my prednisone intake back to 15mg\/day and I plan on decreasing the dosage by 5mg\/day over the next three days and documenting the changes.<\/li>\n<li>Sunday, October 14 &#8211; I have been off prednisone since Friday and I have fresh patches of vasculitis on my thighs and shins. My arthritis is minimal; I have a slight stiffness in my left foot but that is it and I am walking fine. However, I had blood in my poo this morning. This may be due to the 38 beers I had last night. It may be indicative of something else. We shall see.<\/li>\n<li>Thursday, October 18 &#8211; the patches of vasculitis turned out to be very minimal, and are in fact fading, although a fresh patch might be starting; it is too small and sparse to really tell. Only very minor arthritis in my tarsals and metatarsals of my left foot. I feel pretty good, actually.<\/li>\n<li>Wednesday, October 24 &#8211; the vasculitis is completely gone as well as the arthritis. Lets hope it stays that way. I still have some persistant leg ulcerations, but the old ones seem to be scabbing up and going away, although they are leaving scars.<\/li>\n<li>Saturday, October 27 &#8211; a fresh patch of vasculitis started on my thighs yesterday, although it seems to be fading already. It was very small and sparse. No arthritis and no new ulcerations as far as I can tell. I&#8217;m off to Mike Moore&#8217;s Halloween party.<\/li>\n<li>Friday, November 9 &#8211; No arthritis, no new patches, and all the scabs have fallen off the ulcerations (plenty of scars, though). I&#8217;m cured! I heard Ando&#8217;s got it now. That fucking sucks.<\/li>\n<li>Tuesday, November 20 &#8211; very minor outbreak of vasculitis concentrated around my lower left leg and ankle. No other symptoms present.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure id=\"attachment_117\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-117\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/09\/leg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/09\/leg-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"My leg, all nastied up\" title=\"leg\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-117\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-117\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pretty gnarly, eh?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>To the left is a pic of my ankle taken on Sunday, September 16th. Pretty gnarly, eh? I guess the only thing to do now is just wait for the blood tests to come back or for it to just go away. Either way, shit&#8217;s crampin&#8217; my style.<\/p>\n<p>EDIT 4\/12\/2010 &#8211; I originally wrote this post in 2007 and the flareups continued until around January 2008, and then they just gradually disappeared, although I am left with some funky looking leg scars. I suspect in the end that it was Henoch-Sch\u00f6nlein purpura which may have been triggered by an upper respiratory infection (I apparently had bronchitis and didn&#8217;t know it. Thank you, Joe Camel.), although the exact cause still remains unknown. If you have recently been diagnosed with LCV, I suggest you contact the Vasculitis Foundation; they have many resources that can help you &#8211; <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.vasculitisfoundation.org\/\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/www.vasculitisfoundation.org\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-crap","category-show-all"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":464,"href":"https:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions\/464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halnesbitt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}