Marla: Difficult Diagnosis and Anxiety

I am hoping someone, anyone, out there could make me feel better because I could not possibly be feeling worse.

It all started last August, when I went to my doctor with joint pain. Arthritis runs in my family and my mom was about my age, thirty-one, when it set in with her.

He ran blood work which did not even phase me. He called me back a week later. My ANA titer was 1:80 so he wanted to run more blood work for specific antibodies. I was negative for SCL-70 and the rest of the connective tissue diseases, however, he sent me to a rheumatologist.

The rheumatologist asked me tons of questions and examined me telling me there was no evidence of arthritis or connective tissue disease and told me to never take the ANA again. Needless to say, I felt ridiculous.

I have never been diagnosed with Raynaud's but one of my toes turns white sometimes. I still periodically have joint pain.

My anxiety is out of control over scleroderma and I am on Effexor. I do not know whether to trust doctors or what.

Can someone please help me who knows what they are talking about?

I am married with a one and four year old. They are my life and the thought of leaving them so young kills me. Thanks for listening.

Webmaster's Note: I can understand how your anxiety over scleroderma developed, as we receive a lot of inquiries from people with this concern. As it happens, about 1 in 10 people have Raynaud's and about 1 in 5 have a diagnosed form of arthritis, whereas only 30 people per 100,000 have scleroderma. So the odds are definitely in your favor for having mild (and perhaps chronic) but not progressive or life-threatening symptoms.

The trouble with anxiety is that it creates an uncontrollable imminent sense of dread, far out of proportion to the immediate situation, and some of that can be caused by not yet understanding the real relative risk posed by various symptoms.

We commonly hear that rheumatologists tell people they don't have any symptoms of arthritis or connective tissue diseases, even when they do. Perhaps they are trying to provide reassurance, but that backfires when people know they have a symptom or two. Real reassurance would be for them to explain precisely how common it is for those symptoms to occur in otherwise completely healthy people, and to instruct people to seek medical care for new or worsening symptoms.

The idea of receiving care in the future if anything else happens is far more reassuring than being told to never have an ANA again. That all by itself could create a panic that if something worse developed, you would not receive the proper care for it. A low-positive ANA is also very common in healthy people.

Your description appears to match that of a mild case of Raynaud's, so keep very warm at all times. Anxiety will only worsen Raynaud's and any sort of pain, so continue to focus on relaxation and joy-enhancing elements of life. That should be easier, now that you have a way to put things in perspective.