Hi all,

I hope someone can help me or shed some light.

I'm a relatively healthy 37yr old male and haven't had many medical issues throughout life. However, I had been laid up for the last few months. This all started with foot pain and foot swelling in the right foot following a 4hr drive (2hrs there and 2hrs back), which was originally diagnosed with an avulsion fracture. This then was diagnosed as Gout/pseudogout as the fracture was old and I'd not done anything to cause any injury.

Fast forward a few weeks, I got a few rash like spots on my chest. On the right hand side, under my nipple and some just on my hip line. These were diagnosed as shingles. I didn't have any pain from these nor any itching.

Through this time I also got a swollen knee, which was aspirated to check for an infection. Everything came back fine.

GPs have been useless so had to go private. Seen an Orthopedic surgeon who referred for MRI on the foot, which came back with no gout and no brakes but was showing loads of inflammation. He then referred me to the Rheumatology dept. 

Spoke to the rheumatologist (past history of reactive arthritis 10yrs ago and diagnosed as HLA-B27 positive/sister also suffers from various autoimmune issues). He said it sounds like a flare up of your arthritis and that a steroid injection will be best to help. Had that and have seen some improvement; however, as I was not mobile and i was using a walker boot for weeks, I've now lost muscle mass in my right leg. This has caused some weakness, which will take time to recover.

In the meantime, my GP has requested I do a Fecal Calprotectin test. This came back at +600 (I believe this is the max they test to). When I visited her she asked me to do a FIT test which as come back at 210.

During this time I've had multiple blood and wee samples taken. Everything else has been fine but my CRP has been up and down, starting at 19, 147, 107, 47, 51. I also had a raised ESR but can't remember what the result was. My RF, blood counts, cholesterol, diabetes all came back fine.

For the pain, I've been taking 

20mg Omeprazole

2x 500mg Naproxen 

6/8 cocodamol 15/500.

I did read that the Omeprazole and Naproxen can raise the inflammation in the bowel and with the reactive arthritis ongoing this could also impact this, but was shocked to find the high FIT result. 

The only time I had some issue with my bowel movements where i noticed blood, was once earlier on when I took ibuprofen and once after taking Colchicine for the grout treatment. My bowels are generally regular and are more likely to get constipation rather than looser bowel movements.

I found out my late father had diverticular disease and duodenal ulcers.

I'm not sure if all this stuff is related but it's got me really worried. I am booked in for an MRI next week to look at my bowels/intestine, as the private doc said its unlikely anything serious as I didn't have symptoms but this was before the positive FIT.

During the last few months I have shed a couple of stones going from about 15st 5lb to 13st 7lb. This was mostly due to cutting out the junk from my diet and possibly due to the muscle loss in my legs. 

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

M