From reading a lot of posts I have just two questions to ask anyone.
1. Is it possible that an adult who has Sjogren's possibly had symptoms in their childhood? It seems many people had growing up issues before their diagnosis.
2. Looking at the scope of possible symptoms, I am wondering if you think that almost every symptom you come up with is related to the Sjogren's? Looking back into my past I can see that most of what has happened with me could be attributable to this disease.
Hi CLRday.... those are definitely things that have come up in the past. Once we started comparing notes, it seemed that a lot of us dealt with weird things like constantly chapped lips, etc as a child. It makes ya wonder if the markers for it can't be found a great deal earlier, even if the disease hasn't manifested itself yet.
And second, SS is so odd in how many things it can effect, it can be hard to tell if the symptoms are from it or not. A lot of things tie together like years worth of fatigue, joint aches, etc but we have to be careful not to attribute everything to it. Would be too easy to miss something else going on. Funny little thing we have here.
Yes it is possible to have childhood Sjogrens. A lot of symptoms and problems we have or have had I believe are related to sjogrens but like enjoy life said if we blame every symptom to sjogrens we could miss something else going on. Sjogrens is so symptomatic it makes it tricky but I believe a lot of it relates to sjogrens.
Hi CLRday, interesting questions. Maybe we have had this illness earlier in life, but our immune system was able to keep the illness at bay(not completely). Then an exposure to certain antigens, virus, infection or some other stressor triggers the illness and our immune system overreacts or cannot continue to keep it completely in check. Many of the symptoms of SS became evident during/after I had major surgery 4 years ago. But, if look back I can see possible/milder symptoms of SS. Like you, I have wondered if I have had this illness since childhood.