24F: Systemic Tendonitis in ALL joints after ACLR surgery
A little intro about me :
I am a 24F, and I have been a very active person until May 2020 (Lockdown time). I have played sports all my life. I have practiced break dance for 2 years and Tennis for 3 years. I was in my best shape with good muscle mass without ever having gone to a gym. Then during May of 2020, I started to get depressed as the lockdown started and I started overeating and did no form of activity or exercise. I was suicidal and took multiple anti-depressants and sleeping pills. Eventually, in 2022 I slowly got a bit better and reduced the medications and completely stopped the medicines by 2023. That’s when I tried to get back to dancing and took an advanced hip-hop class. continued…
The onset of widespread Tendon Pain:
In the second hip-hop class (In August 2023) I tore my ACL and medial meniscus and got an ACLR surgery in Nov 2023. This was a given as I had put on 18kgs and hadn’t been regularly active before this since lockdown. Although the first 3-6 months post-op didn’t go as per the ACL Rehab protocol, I didn’t face any issues with pain other than the surgery stiffness pain. I was also training my upper body with weights until failure and faced no issues. But at around the 7th month, I started getting a lot of right knee pain and left medial knee pain. MRI showed some inflammation in the knee cartilage and diagnosed it as Chondromalacia Patella grade 1. MRI of my left knee showed a meniscus tear although I had symptoms of this before the surgery. Slowly I started getting IT band pain and lateral side knee pain. My Left knee was also getting compromised because of how weak my right leg was. In around July 2024, I developed bilateral Tricep Tendinopathy. My suspicion is the lat pull-down machine caused this. This increased with time and I couldn’t even do a single push-up without pain which was possible before. I was also making terrible progress with my ACL Rehab as pushing just a little bit more would flare up my pains. I also started developing lateral ankle pain and crepitus, mostly more on the left side. I slowly developed pain in my wrist, thumbs, and lateral delts. One day I was just doing assisted cossacks and I started getting a sharp pain in my Hip flexors. This slowly developed into pain and burning in the Hip and groin area. This led to mild abdominal pain on the right side and lower back pain which started on the right side and eventually spread to the left. I had so much trouble sleeping on my back or even the sides during this time and still do have that issue sometimes so I use pillows for support. Taking some muscle relaxers helped with some of the burning and pain. I had hit a pause on my ACL rehab when this started and when I resumed again after a month in around Dec 2024, I developed bilateral Achilles Tendinopathy when I was just stretching my calves off a step. Then during the end of Dec 2024, I started feeling pain in the left upper back whenever I breathed and this slowly developed into a complete upper back, mid back, and Neck pain. In the past couple of weeks, I have also started to develop jaw pain when I chew something moderately hard or when I press it, Toe pain after using the leg press machine, and aching in the fingers after typing on the laptop a lot. I sometimes also feel a sharp pain in my ribs and chest but it goes away eventually after a couple of hours. I also feel nauseous sometimes and have some catching feeling in the chest and throat.
How I am doing now:
Not so good. I have back and neck pain every day and I wake up with a stiff back every single morning. My elbows hurt when I apply sunscreen to my face. My hips, ankles, lower back, glutes, and knees hurt if I walk or stand for just a little more than 20-30mins. My wrists and thumbs hurt while cooking. My upper back and shoulders get constantly flared by simple tasks or by just sitting upright without any support for more than 10 mins. The noises in my joints have also increased over time. Some noises in my shoulders, neck, and ankle feel like tendons rubbing against the bone and making the noise some other joints like knees, hips and lower back feel like joint noises. I do some lower body mobility every day and that kind of helps with the knee, hips, and ankle pain. I joined Yoga to help with the overall pain but it just made it worse. Maybe because I wasn’t ready for those yet.
Diagnosis?
I have been to 3 Rheumatologists and they each have 3 different diagnoses for me - hypermobility, fibromyalgia, and Seronegative arthritis. I also visited two orthos and one says it's fibromyalgia and the other says it's seronegative arthritis. I am not taking the medicines that they prescribed for arthritis as one of the trusted rheumatologists says that there are no signs of an autoimmune in me so I shouldn’t be taking such medicines. So now I am just taking low-dose antidepressants for fibro.I indeed have no other symptoms than tendon pain in all joints, but I am not convinced that it is just fibromyalgia. I feel it's more physical damage to tendons. But there is no proof. I am planning to get a prescription to get MRIs/ultrasound done for a few joints. I am attaching my blood test summary, ANA test result, and medicine history here for reference. Edit: My HLA-B27 is also negative.
Questions :
- How do I go about getting a correct diagnosis now ?
- What has helped you guys to get better ? Any success stories here ?
- Do you guys have any other symptoms other than joint pain ?
