Me, The Egoist

As some of you may know, I’ve been having knee problems for the past year now. After talking with doctors we though that the problem was something like a bone chip inside the knee causing swelling and other problems. I had an excellent doctor perform arthroscopic surgery (he did a *really* good job). The pain went away for a week or so, but came back, and they recommended that I see a Rhumatologist, under the suspicion that it was some form of arthritis. I didn’t think so, but then other joints started swelling and I started to think that this might be the case.

I’d been taking Ibuprofen (Thank Advil for candy-coated goodness) at above-label-recommended strengths for a while. It helped out a lot, but it didn’t make life livable - it just made it bearable. So after some wonderful wikipedia research, I decided to try Naproxin Sodium, under the brand name of Aleve. I didn’t want to try this during the week because I can’t take Ibuprofen and Naproxin Sodium at the same time; if the Naproxin Sodium didn’t work, I still needed to be able to move, which is what Ibuprofen allowed me to do. So I waited until Friday night to try some Naproxin Sodium - taking some before bed to see how well I would sleep. Surprisingly, I woke up with substantially less pain and stiffness than usual. I took some that morning and I was able to get up and go about my business, easily putting in two and a half hours of work on the spare bedroom. What a change! Thank you, Aleve.

I don’t know what the long-term effects of this medication will be. I’ll be seeing doctor this week so I’ll ask about that, about what the real actual safe dose limit is, and to see if there are other long-term options that we can indulge. But until then, I’ll stick with my Naproxin Sodium. It’s great stuff!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 3:03 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.