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Can anyone tell me what the rheumatoid factor has to do with Lupus? My doctor said mine was pretty elevated and I have swollen lymph nodes all over, a bad rash on my face and chest, swollen belly (look pregnant), interstitial cystitis, purple spots on different areas of me, my hands and feet (or even arms and legs at times) go completely numb for no reason, have a prickly/tingling feeling in them at times, feel like cold water is running down my arms or legs at times, have some lumps now on top of my head that are oozing some kind of clear fluid (like a knot you might get if you hit your head real hard on something except that I have not had any kind of bump to my head and there are a few knots there), real dizzy at times, vomitting, and sometimes have a ringing in my ears. My toes often look purple and I am extremely tired all the time--I mean severely tired for no reason at all. I can sleep all night and still need to lay down after being up for an hour in the morning! I ache all over real bad in my bones too. My doctor is trying to determine if I have lupus or not but I am wondering if any of you who do have it could help me at all? It is taking so long for this to be diagnosed. He did bloodwork and said I had too high a rheumatoid factor. He did x-rays of all my joints and is seeing arthritic condition in there (I forget what word he used). He said my back is scoliosis. The ultrasounds of all my lymph nodes showed a lot of swollen nodes all around my neck and behind my ears area as well as linginal and groin area and they said there are some in my abdomen where there shouldn't be lymph nodes at all?! He said it definitely looks like an autoimmune situation but wants to determine exactly what it is (which I am so grateful that he is trying to finally get a true diagnosis on the condition as I have been in extremely severe pain for a long time now), The pelvic pain that is the worst pain is from the interstitial cystitis and I am being treated for that--so although it could take a few months to get relief from that, they said I eventually will. But the other symptoms outside of the bladder symptoms (frequency, etc) that I am having they said are not from the IC and something else is going on. Anyways, he is going to send me to a rheumatologist and supposed to call me this afternoon with the appointment but warned me it could be a few months before I could get in!!!! (which by then I bet a lot of these symptoms will be gone because the last episode I had, by the time I got to the specialist that time they had gone and I felt stupid seeing the doctor and told him I was fine at that point!) But I did not know that I had an episodic condition at that point and just assumed whatever it was had gone away and that I didn't need to see the doctor anymore! But it keeps coming back worse and worse and I just can't deal with it too much longer. I need to know what is wrong so I can figure out what I can do about it. By the way, the only thing that has given me any true relief from the symptoms within just a few hours has been corticosteroids (as long as they were at a high enough dose). I don't know why and the doctors don't either. Any thoughts anyone? I would be so grateful!!!!
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