u/ConcentrateClear2280

Hi everybody! About 9 months ago, I started feeling throbbing pain in both of my thumbs. This would happen multiple times a day and lasted a couple weeks before turning into movement related pain in the same location. I waited until January to see if it would resolve on its own and met with an OT. She said the onset of my pain and the bilateral nature made her think RA, with the exception of my age (33). We decided to brace my left thumb for the month since that one hurt worse and gave me some exercises. I didn’t notice too much improvement after I stopped bracing and she suggested I talk to my GP. They recommended to me to ortho who said again, it sounds like RA but because of my age and no other joints that hurt, he was “stumped”. He put me on meloxicam for two weeks and to stop if it wasn’t helping, or three if it was, then stop to see if the pain came back. I’m assuming this is his idea of testing if it’s inflammatory pain or not. The meloxicam is definitely not doing anything that I can tell. I’m taking 15 mg at night and there is nothing on my body that has inflammation that this is improving, let alone my thumbs. They said “diagnosing through blood work is hard” so they didn’t even suggest talking to my GP about blood work (despite no answers as to why I am sleeping between 10-12 hours a night, half of the week all of a sudden a couple months after the onset of my pain, and a spike in some CBC and WBC panels done in February). I’m afraid if I tell them the meloxicam isn’t working, they will assume it’s injury related (despite there being nothing close to an injury or overuse I could’ve experienced at the time) and want to cast both of my thumbs unnecessarily. I guess I’m just hoping for some insight on if Kaiser is once again failing me and a chronic pain related issue or if this is common for multiple people to have the same idea of a diagnosis and completely ignore it because of my age.