Hi Joe. I'm often conflicted about what to do when laymen give me medical advice. It only happens when it's not obvious who I am. I know you mean well. But If your general practitioner said his back hurt would you have gone this route, or just assumed he had a handle on his problem? When a person doesn't have a lot of knowledge in a particular area it's only natural for them to draw upon the little knowledge they do have to try and solve what seems like a similar problem, and that is why you are painting me with the brush you yourself have been colored with. I appreciate the concern and your genuineness in wanting to help me, but having a six-year degree in medicine and having this problem for 17-years now I understand exactly what ails me, and it's not RA. No, my problem is degradation of my discs and adhesions. The latter is where scar tissue (lots of it) has formed because of all my lumbar surgeries. The addition of all this fibrous tissue where no solid structures should be further crowds out my body's normal innervation as well as attaching to those nerve fibers preventing their normal ability to slide smoothly about. That irritates the nerves causing them to swell which can quickly become rather severe unless I can reduce the swelling, hence my PERIODIC reliance on steroids. My problem does not involve RA though, at least not at this point.