A sigh of relief

Today brought good news- finally. Alex's arthritis seems to have pretty much disappeared overnight. He is not complaining of anything hurting today and is back to running around like a mad man. All of the joint swelling and warmness has subsided. We will see the rheumatologist again in 2 weeks, but hopefully that will be end of our relationship with her! We saw the cardiologist today and Alex had an echocardiogram and an EKG done- both normal thank God. The cardiologist said that he would label this as post strep reactive arthritis and not rheumatic fever because Alex does not have any cardiac involvement at all (again- thank God). Also, rheumatic fever is not a good label to have as there are certain precautions and things that go with that so it's not a diagnosis they like to hand out. There is a physician at the U of MN that is a strep specialist who the cardiologist happens to work with. He is going to give all of Alex's information to him and consult with him about whether or not there is anything else we should be doing at this point and to see if he concurs with the cardiologist's diagnosis. It seems like there is a spectrum of severity with strep related illnesses and Alex was very fortunate in that it did not attack anything except his joints. If this is indeed what they are calling it, the arthritis will not come back and will not have caused any permanent damage. We are still going to bring him in for an eye exam because if by some remote chance it really is JRA, this would show up in an eye exam. For now, we will continue to give Alex pencillin twice a day for a year and then have another echocardiogram and EKG and a visit with the cardiologist to discuss what to do next (hopefully nothing). We are all grateful, relieved and completely exhausted........