This could possibly be a very long first post.  Just warning you.  

This all started nearly two years ago.  I was having difficulties with a random and strange allergic reaction where my eyes would quite suddenly swell nearly shut and I'd get hives.  My GP sent me to an allergist who found nothing new in the things I've always been allergic to after lots of testing and jamming a camera up my nose several times.  (I never did like him much, but the camera cemented that one, especially when my insurance called it unauthorized surgery.)  He wound up prescribing some additional allergy meds and the symptoms eventually waned and stopped happening altogether.  Maybe the allergies had absolutely nothing to do with my eventual RA diagnosis, but that's when the GP did a complete blood count and said, "Your white cell count is very high and you have a very high CRP level."  She put me on antibiotics for a couple of weeks, thinking it was an infection and asked me to come back to check the blood work.  Of course that didn't fix it.  When I went in for a re-check a couple of weeks later, I told her that my feet were hurting.  She said to lose some weight.  She prescribed more antibiotics and I went on my way.  My feet kept hurting, but I finished the antibiotics and didn't bother going back for a few months.  I felt fine in every other way.  

A few months later, I was feeling exhausted all the time, my feet hurt and were going sort of tingly numb as well.  I developed a rash on my shins.  It was extremely itchy and driving me crazy, and I couldn't make it go away.  By the time I'd nearly scratched myself into an infection, I took it to the GP.  She immediately put me on prednisone and antibiotics, exclaiming that I should have come in MUCH sooner.  I told her my feet were still hurting.  She said to lose some weight.  She took more blood and called me to tell me that my CRP was still incredibly high, but let's check it again after the antibiotics.  I felt lousy, but the rash went away and I gained some weight on the predinisone.  I also lost my temper and screamed at my mother-in-law in a very uncharacteristic way.  Don't you love prednisone?  

Another blood check a couple of weeks later revealed that my CRP was elevated and my white count was high, and my feet still hurt.  She said I really needed to lose some weight and changed my blood pressure medication.  Two weeks later, another blood check revealed the same things, so she referred me to a hematologist.  He was a very nice man, but the first thing he wanted to do was a bone marrow biopsy, which scared the living hell out of me, my husband, and my children.  It wasn't much fun, either, but we all survived and found out that there was nothing wrong.  My white count was still very high and my CRP was going off the proverbial charts, though.