Hi there, does anyone else get painful fingers and fat looking knuckles. My fingers hurt a lot in the night and become very stiff. Also i,m getting clusters of spots, first itchy ones on trunk and then non itchy ones on face and neck. My diagnosis,about 5 yrs ago,was undifferentiated connective tissue disease but I have seen lupus written in brackets on all my notes so i,m not sure if that means they are expecting it to turn into lupus. Never seem to get a straight answer from rheumatologist and always see someone different. Does anyone know if it's safe to take sleeping pills with hydroxychloroquine as I have so much trouble sleeping due to all the joint pain. Totally knackered all the time. Would be very grateful for any suggestions.
thanks, mellie
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smellie
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Hi and yep I get stiff ,swollen and painful knuckles and fingers but unsure if iyts my Lupus , Rheumatoid Arthritis or Fibromyalgia. Thing is hubby gets very swollen stiff fingers and he has osteoarthritis and Fibromyalgia. Have the rheumatologists or gp said or checked to see if you have Arthritis and or Fibromyalgia which are often associated conditions to Lupus? Probably worth getting checked especially if it causing you to lose sleep .
Hi, thanks effie, when first diagnosed rheumatologist said it was not fibromyalgia but I guess things could have changed since then.i think they checked for arthritis to at the time. Thanks for your help and best wishes to you.
I get pain in most of my hand joints and fingers. GP and rheumatologist have said it is osteoarthritis. Rheumatologist just dismisses it saying everyone has this type of arthritis (even though I am only 43!). I have been told that the lupus will cause an early onset of osteoarthritis. My fingers don't swell but I have nodules on the joints. I think the pain tends to be at times when the nodules are growing.
Thankyou crazyk. I too have knobbly knuckles on the affected fingers. Rheumatologist said he couldn't feel any 'atrophy ' whatever that is, I must look it up, but I know they have changed shape and are different to my other hand. Sore to press on the knuckles to. I will look up osteoarthritis to. Thanks for our help.
At the mo, the ring finger on my left hand is 13mm bigger in circumference than on my right. And for good measure (deliberate pun!), the middle finger on my right hand is 11mm bigger than on my left. And the skin is all red and flaky. I'm in cashier-frightening mode already and it isn't Halloween yet.
Definitely get the same, also toes, sometimes! And my elbow joints are often the first indication of a flare. Sad, as I can no longer play piano or an instrument, so have to use an accompanist for my music lessons, and also find that knitting and gardening are problematic. But X rays have shown my joints to be straight and not RA, so my diagnosis was UCTD, which my rheumatologist explained as being an overlap of lupus, sjogrens, RA (a bit) and you name it!!
Methotrexate has definitely helped with the swelling a lot, although it comes on at night quite often, as you have said, so I don't sleep well either.
Heigh ho, you can never say that we have dull lives.....something different every day and I'm all for scaring cashiers! Air hugs to all. X
Thankyou musicteach. The elbow joint pain / soreness is familiar to me to. Sometimes they are sore to touch. Your right, there's never a dull moment! I find I often have a week of one thing and then a week of another thing, and so it goes on.
It's a poo, isn't it? And when you get to the GP/consultant, it's always on a good day! But we carry on, and I am lucky that I can still teach...though I have cut it to three days every fortnight. I keep thinking I should give it up, but then someone new comes along and I say yes...I am just so grateful that they put up with my "lupusy" moments, and they do progress and take exams, etc, so the brain fog can't be quite do bad as it sometimes seems!
Hi, I often get swollen fingers during the night. I wake up with stiff sausage fingers that are also painful. They're so fat my wedding ring is unable to move. I have mentioned it to my rheumy but she doesn't seem remotely interested!
The finger pains are what eventually set me off towards the rheumy clinic. The knobbly bits are swollen, and it takes some time to get going in the morning.. I also have reynaud's and some mornings the index fingers are completely dead. I have hands braces to wear. I am skinny, so none of this is much noticeable to others, though my sons have said my hands look weird. My rheumy did a nailfold capilleroscopy which showed abnormalities in the capilleries.
By the way, I was already on zolpidem when the rheumy prescribed hydroxy, so I don't think that is a problem.
Many thanks lupyknit. Yes sounds very similar to my fingers. At least I know it's par for the course hey! I to have raynauds, maybe that's contributing to it. I will look into zolpidem, thanks and best wishes.
Thankyou for your reply. I,m sorry for you but it is so helpful to know that it's just part of the condition. It really helps to talk to people with the same problems doesn't it. Do you have lupus or UCTD? I,m constantly on the look out for signs that mine is developing into lupus and just interested to know what is what. My rheumatologist dismissed it to when I mentioned fingers. If they just said, don't worry that happens because...., it would help us understand it wouldn't it! I have to gain all my info from the Internet and this fab site as I find the hospitals so uninformative, it's frustrating 😤
Musicteach, I notice that you mentioned knitting problems. As you can tell from my name, I'm quite a knitter! Have you tried using cubic/square shaped needles instead of the traditional round ones? They are much easier on the fingers, and I know many with arthritic fingers have been able to take up knitting again with them.
Yes, I get this and in other parts, too, my whole body feels as if it is bursting - water or nutritional liquids, exercise or rest can help for me. I get itchy red spots, too, that bleed. My original diagnosis was severe chemical allergies, fatigue and depression, but I share a lot of the symptoms of lupus patients and more. I just do my best to listen to my body and manage it because I cannot take drugs and from what I read, it is just as well with all the side effects anyway. I eat a whole food natural diet and try to live as natural life as possible in this difficult world of pollution and toxicity.
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