Shot through the heart... no leg, it's not Bon Jovi!

Sing with me.. "Shot through the heart and you're to blame, baby you give love, a bad name!"  Yeah, so last week I started my weekly shots to the heart leg for Enbre1 (spelled with a one to hopefully get out of search engines).  For those catching up, I have ankylosing spondylitis and was diagnosed in late last year.  Major symptoms started in March 2012 and it progressed rapidly until I ended up at UAB with the head of rheumatology... good times!

Anyway, many meds later it was stay on a low dose of prednisone forever or try the Enbre1.  The catch with the En. is that it will lower your immune system, and with our germ catcher of a 4 yr old, this didn't seem like a good plan.  So, I held off after first talking about it in Dec.  About 1.5 months ago the steroid seemed to stop working though and En. seemed the next logical step... so, here I am.

After last week's shot I actually felt a little less ran down.  I looked into it and it can work that fast on that particular symptom in some people.  As it got closer to Wed's next shot (every Wed!), I started having sharp pains so not sure if it was just normal things or maybe it was just my body saying "uh yeah, we'd like another shot of that something, something."  We'll see!  Second shot was a few days ago and I can say I haven't had any sharp pains since I woke up Thurs morning.

The shot stings something awful! And, my leg hurts a good while after.  Other than these things, not much side effects.  A friend has sent some rice packs to heat or cool to try to help with the sting and hurt so I'll be trying those next week.